Hell's Legacy
by PMOHWinters
Summary: On March 8, 2550, multi-trillionare Anthony Bellarius signed his final will and testament... and then promptly threw himself out of his window. Now the search is on for the mystery heir, who is lost in the chaos of the Human-Covenant War.
1. Respect Your Elders Or Else

AN: ARGH! Well, good news and bad news. Bad news, the comp where I had my next chapter of Long Road Home had its display get fried, and it won't be back for a week or two, and I'm too demoralized to try and rewrite it all from memory. Good news, the hard drive will most likely stay intact so I can restart it once I get it back. In the absence of this fic, I've decided to start the new one I've been planning a bit prematurely, so enjoy!

Chapter 1: Respect Your Elders… Or Else

**Earth  
Year 2448**

Anthony Bellarius, 18 years old, marveled at the sight of Earth when the transport exited Slipspace. As part of a student exchange program, Anthony was one of the lucky three hundred thousand Outer Colony teens to be transferred to Inner Colony colleges and universities. As the star liner _Nile's Bounty_docked with the Venezuelan Space Elevator, Anthony reached into his pack and pulled out a picture of his grandparents.

They were originally UNSC pioneers, tasked with surveying unexplored planets and judging whether they were suitable for habitation or terraforming. Eventually though, old age caught up with them and they retired to Corona, one of the colonies that they helped found. Meanwhile, Anthony's parents had taken up the family profession but were killed in a freak radiation storm during a routine survey. Anthony's grandparents then took care of Anthony until he graduated high school, where they managed to get him in this special exchange program.

He sighed as he watched the docking collars make contact with the ship's hull. Chances were, by the time he would be able to leave Earth again, his grandparents would be long dead. They were painfully aware of this fact, and had left him with everything they had. Anthony was determined not to squander this chance and to make something of himself.

**March 8, 2550**

Anthony sighed as he looked out the window of his penthouse suite, which offered a marvelous view of New York that rivaled his first glance of Earth all those years ago. Pity this would be his last time to see it.

Anthony Bellarius, 120 years young, was the sole owner of the Bellarius Conglomerate, a galactic megacorporation based on over thirty worlds and with operations on nearly a hundred more. Anthony had his hands in everything: titanium mines in the Orelean Cluster, Warthog and Scorpion factories on Orestes, rubber plantations on Seravee, contracts for the hundreds of MAC stations in orbit around Earth, and even the space elevator based in Venezuela that had brought him down to Earth 120 years ago. Through clever political, financial, and corporate maneuvering, Anthony had his own miniature empire which he owned 99.9 of. His net worth was estimated at trillions of dollars, but Anthony knew the true number. Adding his personal financial reserves, the corporate accounts, and his hard assets, Anthony's net worth was five hundred sixty two trillion dollars, rounded down, of course.

But even with all of his success, Anthony could not be exceptional at everything. He quickly found out that his weakness was maintaining a family. Keeping track of the nuances of a galactic megacorporation was well within his means, but when it came to dealing with his five ex-wives and sixteen children, he had no answers. Over the years, Anthony had picked up a number of wives, and pretty much all of them were in it for the money. The marriages never lasted for more than a couple of years. His children and grandchildren really weren't any better. They were all sycophantic, spoiled little money grubbers who didn't have a single clue on how to hold onto a dollar for more than two seconds. The only people Anthony had any semblance of a positive relationship with these days were his lawyers. They've actually been incredibly busy for the last few months, for one enormous reason.

Anthony Bellarius was going to die.

Though the specifics were never publically revealed, the media soon began to catch on that the 120 year old entrepreneur's age was finally beginning to catch up to him. The tumor in his head was not responding to conventional treatments, and his body was beginning to reject his flash cloned organs. The overriding issue now was to decide what will happen to his corporate empire when he passes away.

That was the biggest problem.

Anthony had no intention of leaving any of the money to his descendants. They would just drive his empire straight into the ground on spending sprees and horrid financial decisions. He knew that his ex-wives and half his children were currently unemployed, and that the other half were working in dead-end jobs or suffering from bad investments, and were running on the last dregs of cash Anthony had provided through charity donations and divorce settlements. He didn't really want to leave his money to the UNSC either. It would just get torn apart through a combination of nationalization, greed, and corruption. Fortunately, he had a third option. It was a massive risk, but it was the best one he had.

During the past few months, Anthony had dropped numerous hints and implications that he would be dividing his wealth equally among his descendants. This caused his estranged family to rub their hands in anticipation for quick, easy cash. As he tossed their "Get Well Soon" and "Thinking of You" cards into the shredder, Anthony knew they were just counting the days until he died. Well, they didn't have to wait long.

With his final will and testament finished, Anthony set the paper down on his table, along with a data crystal. He then hobbled over to the balcony and took one last look at the New York skyline. He then stood on the edge of the balcony, arms spread. It reminded him of base jumping off Standoff Point.

With one final breath, Anthony Bellarius vaulted over the edge of the balcony and fell over a hundred stories to the ground below.

**Fifteen Minutes Later**

Nobody was sure what had happened at first. It was the beginning of any normal day, with commuters trying to beat the morning rush hour to get to work or return home from the night shift. Suddenly, there was a wet _smack_, a woman's piercing scream, and the shrill whine of a car alarm as Anthony Bellarius' body crushed the vehicle's roof in. Nobody knew who it was at first, even the people who worked in Anthony's building, since man had not been seen in public for over a year. Within minutes, paramedics arrived and ran a DNA scan, and confirmed that the man who had vaulted himself from the hundred story building was in fact Anthony Bellarius.

David Kenson was used to getting emergency calls. As Anthony Bellarius' personal attorney, who get them very often and he had worked out a way to get from his law office to Anthony's penthouse in just under twenty minutes. However, he wasn't expecting to see a huddle of spectators and media surrounding a lone ambulance.

"Are you Mr. Bellarius' attorney?" A frazzled policeman asked David.

"That's right. David Kenson." David confirmed. He then motioned to the girl behind him. "This is my assistant, Amy Benson."

"Follow me." The policeman said hastily, plowing a path through the spectators. "Your client just fell out of a window, and we need authorization to enter the premises."

"And you'll get it, Officer…"

"Thomas."

"We just need to confirm the identity of the body first, Officer Thomas." David said.

"Right this way." Officer Thomas nodded. He led the two lawyers to the ambulance, where paramedics were loading Bellarius' pulverized corpse into the vehicle.

"That's definitely him." David said, gagging at the sight. Behind him, he could hear Amy coughing loudly as she fought to keep her breakfast down.

**Anthony Bellarius' Penthouse**

"I'm sure you understand, we have to confirm whether his death was accidental or not." Captain Louis Phelps of the NYPD explained as David punched in the authorization code to open the penthouse door.

"I'm aware of the nuances of NYPD standard procedure." David said.

Once the doors opened, the NYPD investigators swarmed in, taking pictures and looking for evidence. Meanwhile, David and Amy made a straight beeline for Anthony's office, with Captain Phelps in tow.

"May I ask what you're doing?" Phelps asked.

"As Mr. Bellarius' personal attorney, it's my duty to take possession of all of his legal documents, including his final will and testament." David glanced at Anthony's desk. "And it seems as if Mr. Bellarius has anticipated these chain of events."

David walked forward and saw the will laid out. On top was a data crystal with a little note attached saying "Please view first, with two witnesses. Eyes only."

"Captain Phelps, would you please lock the door? This is strictly confidential matter."

Phelps nodded and slapped the lock command on the office door, sealing the trio in. David then picked up the crystal and inserted it into a nearby player. A fuzzy holographic image of Anthony materialized in the air. According to the timestamp, the recording took place only a few minutes ago, shortly before Anthony's death.

"David." Anthony's techno-ghost spoke. "If you're watching this, then you've probably already found my body lying somewhere on the street in front of the building."

"I guess that rules out accidental." Amy whispered to Phelps.

"In front of you is my current will and testament. I've already taken the liberty of signing it first, though it needs the signature of a legal official and at least two witnesses. If you would, please sign the will, but do not divulge its contents for a month. That is all."

The holographic image then winked out as the recording ended. David walked forward, picked up the will, and read it. It was incredibly simple, short, and to the point, lacking much of the legal jargon that defined most wills.

_To those whom it may concern, this is my, Anthony Bellarius', final will and testament._

_All of my personal wealth and assets will be given to my daughter Jennifer Vail. She is currently a Private in the 109__th__ Orbital Drop Shock Troops, who have been deployed to the Rama system._

_I name my attorney David Kenson as the executor of this will, and he is free to use any resources or means to carry out its terms._

David's hands trembled. Though the will was barely a paragraph long, what it was demanding would very much shake the foundations of the corporate world, as well as every single one of Anthony's descendants. Amy took a look at the will and gasped.

"Wow, so he really is giving it one of his descendents." She remarked.

"Not exactly." David shook his head. "I know all of them, and there is not a single Jennifer Vail among them."

"Wait…" Amy cocked her head curiously. "If she's not part of his family, how can she be his daughter?"

"There are a lot of things about the old man we don't know." David shrugged. "But that's what the will says, and we're legally obligated to carry it out."

"May I ask what's going on?" Phelps asked, confused.

"You know Mr. Bellarius' family, right?" David asked.

"Oh yeah, a really colorful bunch." Phelps nodded. "Had to deal with some of them myself a few times."

"Basically, what this will does is screw them all over." David explained, using rather unorthodox language. "None of them are getting a single cent, and all the money is going to this mystery daughter of his."

"Wow." Phelps whistled. "The guy must've really hated his kids."

"Like you wouldn't believe." David grinned. "Do you realize what's happening? By telling us to keep the will secret for a month, that's a month for his descendants to go on a spending spree because they think they're getting the inheritance…"

"...and they'll only dig themselves deeper into debt." Phelps gasped. "Your boss sure is a real bastard."

"A magnificent bastard." David nodded. "I've already signed on as the attending legal official. I just need two witnesses to sign."

"Well, that's pretty much my job." Amy drew her pen.

"How about it, Captain?" David turned to Phelps.

"Well, how many times can you be a part of history?" Phelps shrugged. "Give me a pen."

**Two Days Later**

David grinned as he sifted through the news reports. The media was in a firestorm about Anthony's death and the upcoming inheritance drama. The fact that the will was being kept secret just added to the fire and speculation and rumors raged. Meanwhile, David's personal investigators were reporting a massive surge in spending on the part of Anthony's wives and descendents, all according to his twisted plan. An outsider would feel almost sorry for them, but David, having rather intimate knowledge of them and their activities, felt so such remorse. Actually, he felt a sort of perverse sense of glee. David had also met with the Bellarius Conglomerate's board of directors and assured them that they had nothing to worry about. It was obvious they were scared stiff that a financially inept fool like Jules Bale or Tony Marks would take the helm.

However, David was only distracting himself from the real job, finding Jennifer Vail. The Bellarius Conglomerate, due to its massive manufacturing capability, had contacts on virtually every level of the UNSC government and military. It wasn't difficult to dig up records on Private Jennifer Vail and her unit, though there was something odd about her record. There was no picture attached, the records only provided the bare minimum required, and there was virtually no background information. The officer in charge of handling the data for that unit insisted that was all the data. However, what worried David more was where the 109th ODSTs were deployed. There had been recent news coverage of the disaster that was Rama II, the second planet of the Rama system. The Marine transports tasked with dropping the ODSTs on the planet were ambushed by a Covenant battlegroup, forcing them to disgorge their troops early. The result was ODSTs being scattered all over the main continent on the planet in no predictable or controllable pattern. It was just a complete mess, and there was no indication that Jennifer was even alive or not.

"So, what do we do?" Amy asked, as she perused though the data. "Do we go in ourselves?"

"No, we're lawyers, not soldiers." David shook his head. "We wouldn't last two seconds down there. Plus, we're all loaded down with our current duties and jobs. I can't afford to lose some good clerks and lawyers to a wild goose chase."

"How about we hire a PMC, or have the UNSC send a representative?"

"We need a person with a proper legal background to give her the notification. Plus, I don't trust the UNSC to handle a job like this."

"Wait, what about Dan?" Amy suggested.

David's face lit up. "Daniel Avers? Perfect!"

Daniel, who was a practicing attorney in David's firm, was once a Marine. Though he had never actually seen combat, he did receive full training. Unfortunately, after a freak accident during a Pelican training mission, Daniel was crippled. Even though he would eventually recover through therapy and flash cloning, the UNSC decided that it wasn't worth waiting for Daniel to recover enough to be restored to frontline status, so he received a disability discharge. With a path in the military ruled out, Daniel instead decided to try his hand at law and eventually ended up in David's employ, where he made a good living at handling class action lawsuits and liability damages.

Also, since Daniel was about to end a month-long leave of absence, he had no other work to be worried about.

"Where are you going?" Amy asked as Daniel picked up his coat.

"To the airport. Daniel needs a ride home, after all."

**John F. Kennedy International Airport**

"You know, I was awfully surprised," Daniel said as he ducked into what used to be Anthony's personal limousine, "I came here expecting a cab, but this is a bit much."

"You obviously don't get much news in Mombasa, do you?" David smiled.

"I spent most of my time out in the grasslands and plains outside Mombasa. I've never actually gone into the city itself very often."

"Well then, I have a surprise for you." David handed Daniel a stack of files.

"What's this?" Daniel asked.

"Your next job." David said. He then pressed a button, which activated the limo's "quiet" mode. It basically ensured that any conversation within the vehicle could not be spied upon. "Our biggest client, Mr. Bellarius, just died."

"That's terrible." Daniel blanched. "Tumor finally get him?"

"Actually, he threw himself out a window."

"Ah."

"But that's not the point. The main thing here is that he's named an heir, except finding her is going to prove a bit… difficult."

"I'm not liking the sounds of this."

"You probably won't." David sighed. "The problem is that this particular heir happens to be in the Marines, a Helljumper in fact, and she's ended up in a rather nasty battlezone."

"And because I'm an ex-Marine, that makes me the most qualified in the firm to pursue this."

"Exactly."

"Well, I've had worse jobs." Daniel sighed and reached into the limo's minibar. "It's okay if I try some of Mr. Bellarius' personal stash?"

"It's not like he's around to complain."

"So, what do I have to do?" Daniel asked as he took a sip of brandy that probably cost more than the entire limousine.

"Just read up on those files and wait for my call." David said. "Don't worry, me and the firm will take care of the small stuff."

**March 20, 2550**

Today was the big day, Daniel thought to himself as he drove the long, winding road that led to one of Anthony Bellarius' private starports. He had studied all the files and data David had given him, but found that there were many crucial areas that were woefully incomplete. Daniel knew that David had some of the best information gathering resources available, so that meant if he couldn't find it, then the data most likely didn't exist. Still, it would've helped if Daniel at least knew what Jennifer Vail looked like.

"Daniel! You finally made it!" David smiled as Daniel got out of his car.

"So how is this going?" Daniel carefully eyed a large steel case.

"I'm sure you'll find most of this equipment familiar." David opened the case revealed a large stock of military-grade equipment.

"Nice." Inside, Daniel could see a full Marine combat load. There was the standard Marine carapace armor, though it appeared to be ODST rather than standard pattern. There was an MA5B assault rifle and M6D pistol with accompanying ammunition, as well as basic supplies. However, there was one item he didn't recognize. "What is this?"

"Ah, that's a rather ingenious little piece of technology." David picked up the small, phone-like gadget. "It's a portable Slipspace communication device."

"You're shitting me." Daniel blanched.

"Oh, you'll be surprised what some of the tech companies under our wing have been cooking up." David smiled. "It basically shoots an encrypted radio signal through Slipspace, allowing for near instantaneous communication with any similar device."

"How much is it?" Daniel wondered.

"Right now? About two hundred billion dollars. We'll probably be able to whittle it down enough to make it viable for commercial use in a few decades."

"Any reason why you're trusting me with such a valuable device?"

"Because I want you to notify me the moment you find Miss Vail." David said. "There's a lot riding on how soon we can find this girl."

Daniel had read about Anthony Bellarius' death, as well as the surprise beneficiary.

"Anyways, I have to warn you." David whispered. "Once you hit the dirt, you might have more to worry about than just the Covenant."

"Like what?" Daniel asked suspiciously.

"Even though they may all be failures at life, Anthony's family members are still incredibly dangerous individuals." David said. "They're going to fight tooth and nail to try and get this will legally thrown out."

"Well, I know that's never going to happen with you around, but that's not what you're talking about, is it?"

"No." David shook his head. "In my personal opinion, they won't be above looking for _extralegal_ methods to resolving this issue."

"You're saying that they might send assassins." Daniel narrowed his eyes.

"There's a reason why we chose you." David said. "Not only as legal counsel, but also as a de facto guardian. It's our duty to see that Mr. Bellarius' final will and testament is fulfilled."

"I got caught in a real big mess, haven't I?" Daniel sighed.

"Well, I'm definitely glad I'm not in your shoes." David laughed. "You'll be ferried up to a Bellarius private shuttle. It'll rendezvous with the _UNSC Solomon's Fury_, where you'll meet your contact."

"I guess I'll see you on the other side." Daniel said as he boarded the shuttle. As the airlock closed, he couldn't shake the ugly feeling that things wouldn't go as planned.

On second thought, they usually never did.


	2. Yet Another Hard Landing

Chapter 2: Yet Another Hard Landing

**UNSC **_**Solomon's Fury  
**_**In orbit around Rama II**

"You'll imagine how surprised I was," Captain Michael Danvers grinned as he lead Daniel through the bowels of the UNSC warship, "when I found out that you, of all people, were going to show up here. I thought you put your Marine days behind you."

"I thought I did too." Daniel shrugged.

Michael was one of Daniel's old Marine buddies, and they had both trained together. However, unlike Daniel, Michael stayed on in the Marines and eventually climbed his way up to a rank of Captain.

"So yeah, I got a call from Command, and all they told me was to prep you for rapid insertion onto the surface." Michael whistled. "Boy, I don't envy you there, it's a total mess on the ground."

"What's the situation?"

"Bad on all fronts." Michael frowned. "The Covenant landed in force and have pretty much taken the southern half of the main continent. The Helljumpers we sent in to counter their push got scattered all over the damn place, and we have no clear idea where any of them are."

"By the way, where are we going?" Daniel asked, looking around.

"We're going to the ship's HEV launch deck."

"Wait, what?" Daniel nearly stopped. "We're not being flown in?"

"If the Marine you're looking for is a Helljumper, then chances are she's slogging around in a place where the Pelicans won't touch with a ten mile pole." Michael explained. "The only areas safe enough to set down in one are on the northern end of the continent, but good luck going south. Our forces have set up a defensive line and nothing gets in or out of it."

They continued walking until they reached the entrance to the HEV launch deck. Guarding the door was a trio of Helljumpers led by a short but aggressive looking sergeant. He saluted Michael, but glared at Daniel.

"Is there a problem, Sergeant?" Michael asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Nothing sir, it's just that we've been letting a lot of _civilians_ on lately." The sergeant said the word 'civilian' with poisonous contempt.

"Listen here, soldier." Michael growled. "Private Avers here was forced to leave the service because he suffered from seven ruptured organs, thirty broken bones, and had one arm and both of his legs crushed in a freak Pelican accident which took him almost two years to recover from. Now, I don't know what you define a true Marine as, Sergeant, but Avers here deserves just as much respect as any Marine. Now you will salute him, and open that door, is that clear?"

Unable to defy the word of a superior officer, the Helljumper clenched his teeth and muttered, "Yes sir."

"You know, that wasn't really necessary." Daniel said as they passed the sentries.

"Sorry about that. I just can't stand the arrogance some these Helljumpers have, especially the younger ones." Michael admitted. "They can be a serious pain in the ass. Speaking of which…"

Michael dug into his pocket and handed Daniel a small data chip.

"What is this?" Daniel asked, looking at the device curiously.

"That's your field promotion, _Captain_ Avers." Michael grinned. "Another gift from your mysterious benefactors. Mighty useful too, since it'll let you boss around most other Marines without too many questions asked."

As they stepped onto the main launch deck, Daniel caught sight of a group of four soldiers dressed in black carapace armor. However, it wasn't a type that he could recognize, which meant they most likely weren't Marines, or even ODSTs.

"Are those special forces?" Daniel whispered.

"Not exactly." Michael shook his head. "Even with the connections your superiors have, Command is unwilling to risk perfectly good Marines, so they instead opted to hire a PMC to escort you."

"So they're basically mercenaries."

"We prefer the term 'civilian specialists'." The lead contractor said. "I'm Captain Willard of Jenkins & Rogers. These fine men and women here are Privates Kelly, Mores, and McGillon."

Daniel had heard of Jenkins & Rogers, or J&R for short. It was one of the many PMCs that had risen to prominence during the war. They were known for having one of the highest combat efficiency ratings among other PMCs, but were not without its critics. There were many complaints and protests about alleged crimes and human rights violations. However, in the midst of a war it was slowly losing, the UNSC conveniently ignored these accusations. Fortunately, nothing about this quartet of soldiers for hire seemed malicious.

"Alright." Michael cut in. "_Solomon's Fury_ is going to hit low orbit over Rama II in thirty minutes. Now, it can't stay in position for very long, so you're dropping the moment we get into position. Your designated LZ is set where we estimate the greatest concentration of Helljumpers are. Once you achieve your objective, you're to make your way to the northern end of the continent, since conventional means of extraction are unavailable."

Suddenly, an alarm blared and the entire bay was bathed in red light. Michael then grabbed Daniel's shoulder and pointed at the nearest open pod.

"That's the signal for emergency maneuvers! Get into the pod now!"

"But aren't we-"

"No time!" Michael cut Daniel off. "That means sensors have detected a Covenant ship nearby! The ship can't afford to stay on this course any longer!"

Already, the J&R soldier were in their pods and prepping for launch. Daniel snuggled himself into his pod and watched as the pod doors slammed shut. There was a brief holographic prompt to remind him to strap in for reentry and landing. The sudden acceleration as the HEV was shot out of its launch tube startled Daniel, though he couldn't do much since the acceleration locked him into place. As he looked out the viewport, he could see the other three pods in front of him, glowing orange as they hit the atmosphere. Within seconds, Daniel's pod began to glow as well. However, as he looked down, his stomach knotted when he saw the back end of a Covenant Seraph fighter. He watched in horror as the alien fighter bracketed the pods in front of him with plasma fire, causing all three to explode in clouds of fire and liquefied metal. Fortunately for Daniel, the Seraph was apparently targeting visually, as it did not notice his presence and the fighter boosted away as a flight of Longswords came to investigate. Daniel knew there was little the Human-piloted craft could do, and he looked back down at the planet, dreading what he would find on the surface.

**Dry Bone Plateau  
Rama II**

Drek Fezamee looked up to see a star fall from the sky.

"We've detected another pod coming down!" One of his Unggoy announced.

"Where?" Fezamee asked, his bloodlust already beginning to simmer. His sector, being a nearly bone-dry desert, was almost devoid of all life. At least the kind that put up a worthy fight. All he and his unit had run into was sand, and the occasional isolated pocket of Human habitation.

"It's automatically homing in on the anomalous signal we've been tracking."

"Two birds with a single stone." Fezamee grinned. "Power the transport and gather the rest of the Unggoy. We're going on the hunt."

**Six Miles Away**

Since he was never trained as an ODST, Daniel wasn't prepared for the sudden shock of both the firing of the HEV's retro-rockets and the sheer impact when it hit the ground. As he stumbled out of the pod and gathered his gear, he noticed something odd just a few meters to his right. He moved closer to inspect the object and realized that it was an HEV beacon. This specialized piece of equipment was used by Pathfinders, the most elite of the Marine units. They were the brave soldiers who pulled the ODSTs and regular Marines forward, scouting out and marking LZs so troops can land safely, as well as providing vital ground intelligence to commanders. Daniel realized that his HEV detected the signal and automatically homed in on it. He then wondered for a second why such a thing would still be sitting out here.

However, his train of thought was broken when he heard the alien whine of Covenant engines. Though it had been years since he last used one, Daniel drew his rifle and made sure it was armed. He then backed away from the pod, making sure to take out all of the necessary gear and supplies first.

A few minutes later, a Covenant Shadow lumbered in, its thrusters kicking up dry desert sand into a cloud of fine dust. So far, none of the aliens seemed to have noticed him, and he believed that he could be able to slip away unnoticed until an armor piercing rocket whistled out of nowhere and struck the Shadow directly in its bulbous cockpit, incinerating the driver. With no intelligence at the controls, the Shadow slewed to the right and smashed into the downed HEV, flipping onto its side and rendering the vehicle's dorsal mounted plasma turret useless. Immediately, an Elite and a slew of Grunts began piling out of the vehicle in an attempt to escape. Daniel could hear the barking of an assault rifle and several of the Grunts fell over and didn't get back up. The Covenant troops returned fire, sending a cloud of plasma fire smashing into the sand dunes. Daniel realized that they were facing away from him, so he primed a grenade and hurled it. The small explosive fell amongst the Covenant formation and exploded, sending Grunts flying. The lone Elite then turned to face Daniel. The alien snarled and charged at him, but then spasmed and fell as two three round bursts pierced its depleted shields and entered its back.

As the Elite fell down, Daniel could see a lone Marine standing behind it and quickly making her way towards him, rifle raised.

"Identify yourself." The nameless Marine demanded, rifle still trained on Daniel.

"I'm Human, if that's what you mean." Daniel half raised his hands. "Captain Daniel Avers, ODST."

"Private Alicia Melchior, 7th Pathfinders." The other Marine replied, lowering her rifle. "You know, I set up that beacon to draw out that Covvie patrol. I never expected it to actually call down reinforcements."

"Well, don't get your hopes up, because it's pretty much just me." Daniel said solemnly.

"Well it's nice to know that I'm not totally on my own out here." Alicia gave a light smile, her dull brown eyes somehow able to dazzle Daniel. Upon closer inspection, Daniel noticed her long brown hair tucked under her helmet, and the fact that she was wearing very light armor, compared to the bulky ODST carapace armor he had on. This served as yet another distraction, as the more form-fitting light armor merely highlighted Alicia's light and slender frame. In addition to her lighter armor, her unit patch and her carbine-pattern MA5B marked her as a Pathfinder.

"Sorry, but at the risk of sounding stupid, do you know where we are?" Daniel asked, finally snapping his gaze away from Alicia's eyes.

"Honestly, I'm not too sure. What do you know?"

"That we're somewhere on the southern end of the main continent."

"Good enough." Alicia sighed.

"Then I guess directions are out of the question."

"Quite." Alicia looked up in the sky and pointed at the setting sun. "We'd better get to shelter fast. When the desert gets cold, it gets _cold_."

Nodding, Daniel grabbed his gear and followed the Pathfinder deeper into the dry wastes.

**Earth**

"So you're on the planet right now?" David asked through his prototype Slispace phone.

"That's right." Daniel's fuzzy voice replied, being transmitted from light years away. "All I can say is that I'm dirtside and looking for the objective."

"Ha, you sound so much like a Marine I forgot you were a lawyer." David smiled as he cracked the lame joke. "Call back when you find her."

"Roger that."

David deactivated the phone and sighed. He sifted through his e-mail and voicemail and found it had been filled to the brim with frantic queries from Anthony's family and their respective lawyers, all demanding to see the contents of the will. So far, David had been able to legally stonewall all their efforts, but it wouldn't be long until they managed to convince some federal judge to order a subpoena. However, it really didn't matter. It was only roughly another eighteen days before Anthony's deadline. No, what concerned him more were the reports from his private investigators. Apparently, some of the _shadier_ relatives were putting out feelers to common websites, meeting areas, and ads that were frequented by hitmen, and there were disturbing rumors of even hiring out PMCs as well. David had tried to put the lid down on these feelers as best he could, but it was only a matter of time before civilian prowlers would start making their way to Rama II…

**Dry Bone Plateau**

"So that's how things are going, huh?" Alicia sighed.

Daniel and Alicia were taking shelter in an abandoned road shed. In brighter days, it was one shed in a line of many that lined the rural desert roads that crisscrossed this area, connecting the various towns and villages scattered around. These sheds served as checkpoints for road maintenance crews, and in cases of dire need, emergency shelters for stranded drivers. However, as Alicia led Daniel inside, he saw that the shed had been abandoned long before the Covenant ever thought about landing on Rama II. There were a few boxes of ammo, some weapons, and a small pile of supplies scattered about. Chemical glow rods provided light, but both Marines had to depend on the clothes on their backs and the walls of the shed to ward off the freezing desert cold.

Since they had nothing else to do, Daniel and Alicia talked, about various things, but mostly how they got stuck on Rama II. Daniel gave her a very broad, but truthful version of the story. An ODST on Rama II had some influential connections. These connections, concerned with the well-being of this certain ODST, wanted her pulled out of the warzone.

"Figures." Alicia snorted as Daniel finished recounting his story. "I wish I had something like that. I joined up with the Marines because I honestly had no choice. On the planet I come from, the planetary government has this system where in the event of war, every physically fit person over fifteen is drafted into the planetary defense force and then sent to the Marines once they hit eighteen."

"That's horrible." Daniel blanched, wondering how such a law even got past the courtroom.

"That's war." Alicia sighed. "Anyways, it was two days after my fifteenth birthday that I got the notice to ship out. Spent the next three years training and came into the Marines as Pathfinder."

Alicia continued on about what she did when she initially landed on the planet. As a Pathfinder, she and her squad were the first Marines to hit the ground. Already, things were looking bad. They had landed over fifty miles off target, and only had roughly seven hours to set up their beacons and clear the LZs for the ODSTs. They did manage to set up their beacons in time, but it was a wasted effort. When the troopships were forced to launch their HEVs early, none were in range to home in on the beacons effectively. All they seemed to do was attract Covenant attention. In a futile attempt to hold the LZs until the ODSTs dropped, three quarters of Alicia's squad was killed. The rest were slowly picked off while trying to evade Covenant patrols, until it was just Alicia left. With no hope of relief or rescue, she had decided to embark on a one woman crusade against the Covenant, spending the last week staging guerilla attacks on the scattered patrols and outposts in the area.

"Well I suppose something nice came out of all this." Alicia smiled.

"What's that?" Daniel asked.

"Now I've actually got something to worry about." Alicia patted Daniel on the shoulder. "Get some sleep, I'll take first watch."

**The Next Day**

The searing heat of the desert sun and the bite of the dry sand made Daniel almost miss the freezing cold nights. During the early morning, he and Alicia had hammered out a plan. They would make their way to the closest population center and try and scrounge up extra supplies and transportation to go northwards, where the greatest concentration of ODSTs would most likely be. As they trudged through the thick desert sand, Alicia stopped.

"Is something the matter?" Daniel asked.

"Maybe." Alicia pointed at the horizon. "That town I mentioned is just over that dune, but before we go in, I need to find something out first."

"What is it?"

"What's your combat experience?"

"Uhhh, admittedly not that much." Daniel said sheepishly. "That little skirmish we had yesterday was the first time I saw a live Covvie."

"Wonderful. The first Marine I see in over a week and he's a newbie." Alicia rolled her eyes and pointed to Daniel's rifle. "At least you know how to shoot the damn thing, right?"

"Of course."

"That's good enough." Alicia started moving forward again. "I have to warn you. Last time I was here, the whole place was crawling with Covvies. I had no idea why, but there's no reason not to suspect that there aren't at least few sticking around."

"Lead the way then."

The two Marines slowly slinked closer and closer to the desolate desert town, using the rolling sand dunes as cover against possible sentries. They eventually hit the outer edge of the town and started taking advantage of the bombed out and burned structures to shield their approach. Daniel mentally noted the fallen road sign as they entered town: _Welcome to Perfection_. As they moved through the ruins, Daniel couldn't help but feel sorrow as he saw all of the destroyed buildings, from shops to houses. However, it wasn't until they ventured even deeper when they realized the true horror of the Covenant attack. Lying in the middle of the street were hundreds of bodies. There was the odd Grunt and Jackal strewn about, but the vast majority were Human. However, they were Humans of all size, sex, and age. Daniel glanced over to Alicia and realized that even the battle-hardened Pathfinder was visibly shaken. Alicia had spent years fighting the Covenant, but she had never been in a situation where she could witness the aftermath of an alien occupation.

What made things worse was that due to the desert heat and the lack of moisture, all of the bodies were almost perfectly preserved, showing little decay even after almost half a month had passed. They looked almost as if they were still alive, merely sleeping until they decided to wake up again.

"All these people…" Daniel shook his head.

"Damnit." Alicia cursed.

Neither Marine said anything else as they carefully, almost reverently snaked their way through the mass of dead. Daniel silently noted that quite a few were armed, with some of the bodies wearing badges and uniforms of local law enforcement. It was fairly obvious that they had died valiantly defending the civilians in this town.

Suddenly, he and Alicia winced as a whine of static pierced their ears before a fuzzy voice yelled through their radios.

"This is Sergeant Welkins of the 8th Planetary Guard! If anybody can hear this message, please respond!"

"This is Captain Avers of the 109th ODST! What's your position?"

"Uh, we're on the south end of town." Daniels responded.

"Head to the water treatment plant on the east side. You can't miss it." Welkins said. "Hurry up. It won't take long for the Covvies to realize we're broadcasting."

"You think you can get us there undetected?" Daniels asked Alicia.

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" Alicia grinned. "Just follow my lead."

True to Welkin's words, Daniel and Alicia discovered that there were indeed Covenant still occupying the town. Alicia was perplexed by this revelation. In her experience, Covenant troops rarely occupied Human towns and installations for more than a few days, much less half a month, before moving off to the next pocket of resistance. She suspected there was something deeper going on here, but she couldn't afford to waste time wondering what.

After several more minutes of evading Covenant patrols and hiding out in the shadows of destroyed buildings, both Daniel and Alicia finally made their way to the town's water treatment plant. In contrast to the rest of the town, the plant was oddly intact, and appeared to still be in operation.

"This is the place." Daniel said.

"Yeah, but where's the welcoming party?" Alicia eyed their surroundings carefully.

"Hey! You two! Over here!"

Daniel and Alicia looked down to see a dirty, but very Human, face poking out of the ground from a manhole.

"Down here!" The man said before quickly disappearing down the hole.

Daniel glanced at Alicia and said, "Ladies first."

"And who said chivalry was dead?" Alicia smiled before disappearing down the hole.

Daniel took one last look around before jumping into the manhole himself. He then carefully pulled the manhole lid back into position, making sure it was locked into place.

**Perfection Water Treatment Facility**

"You can't imagine how surprised we were," Sergeant Talbert Welkins sighed happily, "when we finally got a response from our radio calls. Granted, we were hoping for the cavalry to come, but this is definitely better than nothing."

Welkins and the ten men under his command were part of the Rama II Planetary Guard. The Guard is essentially the civilian reserve force for the UNSC Army, which is actually charged with planetary defense. However, in times of war or great need, PG units can be activated to serve on the frontlines, and many didn't have much a choice when the Covenant started landing. Welkins was part of a company of around 150 men tasked with defending Perfection and the surrounding towns, but they were quickly overwhelmed by the waves of Covenant. Welkins took what few men were left and retreated to the underground utility halls and caverns under the town. Since then, they've been harassing the occupying Covenant force by any means possible, though it was plainly obvious to everybody that they could not keep up this level of resistance forever.

"So we need enough transportation to get the thirteen of us out of this desert, along with enough supplies to keep us going along the way." Alicia concluded.

"Where can we find that stuff?" Daniel asked.

"There's a motorpool near the center of town." Welkins pointed to the tattered map in front of him. "That was where we stored all our vehicles before we were forced to ditch them. There's a good chance they may still be in there."

"Okay, so it's a simple smash and grab then." Daniel concluded.

"Not exactly." Welkins shook his head. "During our raids, we found out that the Covenant were up to more than just occupying the town."

"Really?" Alicia was genuinely interested now. She wasn't the only one who had noticed the Covenant's odd behavior.

"There's something we have to take care of first before we leave." Welkins said solemnly.

"What is it?" Daniel asked.

"I think it'll be better if I show you." Welkins picked up his rifle. "Follow me."


	3. Like A Bat Outta Hell

Chapter 3: Like a Bat Outta Hell

**Perfection**

"What am I supposed to be looking at here?" Daniel asked.

He, Alicia, and the rest of the Guard squad were perched on the rooftop of an abandoned housing unit, which served as a perfect vantage point over the motorpool as well as the surrounding town. They had spent the past half hour observing Covenant movement throughout select parts of town.

"Right there, about a kilometer north of the motorpool." Welkins pointed. "Under the water tower."

Daniel shifted his perspective to where Welkins was pointing, and noticed numerous Covenant troops hurriedly moved about. There was a much, much greater concentration of them than on the outskirts of town. He also noticed heavy machinery being moved, and heavy lifters carrying dirt out of the town and dumping it into huge piles.

"They're digging?" Daniel wondered. "Why in the world would they invade a planet just to dig?"

"That's not the worst of it." Welkins glanced at his watch. "You should be able to see it right about now."

"What am I supposed to-" then Daniel's face blanched, "holy shit."

"What?" Alicia pulled out her own pair of binoculars to see and gasped, "Oh my god…"

There, in the middle of the street, was a line of ragged, wretched figures that took Alicia several seconds to realize were Humans. From the looks of it, they had been pressed into slave labor ever since the Covenant invasion. Their painfully visible skeletal frames, deathly pale complexion, and look of general despair painfully reminded her of the recordings of concentration camps on the Warsaw III colony. As she looked on, the Covenant guards herded the wretched slaves out of the mystery dig site and directly into the motorpool.

"It looks like we have more to do than just ditching this place." Alicia growled.

Personally, part of Daniel secretly wanted to get north as soon as possible, with the prisoners or not. They weren't exactly his concern, but some piece of his conscience tugged at him, and it was clearly obvious that Alicia and Welkins weren't going to leave without them.

"Well, we have one thing going for us." Daniel observed. "They've put the prisoners and the vehicles in one place, so when we attack, we can sweep both up in one go."

"Yeah, but we've still got all those Covenant to bust through." Alicia pointed out. "Welkins, how many Covenant are there?"

"We've estimated that they've got about three hundred troops with light armor support, and about a hundred noncombatants. You know, those weird floaty squid things."

"Against just the thirteen of us." Welkins pointed out.

"All we need is a distraction, don't we?" Daniel shrugged.

"As long as we can hit somewhere where it hurts." Welkins nodded.

"Well, that dig site seems incredibly important to them." Alicia said.

"Idea." Daniel grinned. "Welkins, you and your squad stay here. Once you see the signal, move and grab the vehicles and the prisoners."

"What's the signal?" Welkins asked.

"Oh, you'll know." He looked at Alicia. "Come on, we've got work to do."

The two Marines returned to ground level and slowly made their way towards the dig site. However, it was too dangerous to move directly to it, so they instead opted to sneak around the main body of Covenant, which took far more time. When they finally reached the dig site, the sun was already coming down.

"Recon?" Daniel asked.

"Don't we always?" Alicia grinned.

The pair moved closer. Fortunately, due to the hour and the absence of the prisoners, there wasn't a very heavy Covenant presence around the dig site. After a few stealthy kills on the part of Alicia, she and Daniel were able to get close enough to the dig site to actually see inside it. It definitely looked like some sort of mining or archeological dig, with heavy machinery littering the pit below. At the bottom the pit, Daniel thought he could see the remains of some kind of structure jutting out from the sand, but he wasn't too sure.

"We've got explosives, right?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah, but not nearly enough." Alicia shook her head. "The dig site is much larger than I thought it would be."

"Wait." Daniel grinned. "Follow me."

They backtracked a few blocks until they reached a parked truck. At first glance, it seemed like any other regular cargo hauler, until Alicia took a closer look at the side and gasped, "It's carrying fusion cores!"

"That's right." Daniel grinned. "Looks like our explosives problem's been solved.

"How did you know this thing was here?"

"I've got a good memory." Daniel shrugged. It was true, since the law profession necessitated having one. "Now we just have to get it running."

"Leave that to me." Alicia stepped up the driver's side door and nonchalantly smashed the window in with the butt of her carbine.

"Jeez, why'd you have to do that?" Daniel asked.

"It's not like anybody's around to complain." Alicia retorted and climbed into the driver's seat, remembering to sweep the broken glass off first. "Good thing I figured out how to hotwire Warthogs during boot camp. This truck can't be all that much different."

"Wait, what?"

"Funny story. I'll tell it to you sometime."

"I'll go get the cores ready then."

As Alicia tinkered with the truck's wiring, Daniel ran to the back of the truck and opened its rear cargo hatch. Inside were rows of commercial fusion cores, used to power pretty much everything from vehicles to home appliances. There was usually great demand for these in small towns like Perfection, which normally wouldn't have reliable access to electricity like the bigger cities. He also happened to know that a simple hard impact wasn't going to set the cores off. They needed a bit of _encouragement_. He grabbed a timed C7 charge and placed it on the nearest fusion core. He set the timer for thirty seconds, but didn't activate it just yet.

"Is the truck ready?" Daniel asked.

"Just a second." Alicia sighed as she worked the wires, making sure not to cause a short and give herself a nasty shock. After twisting the last pair of wires together, the truck's engines growled as the vehicle slowly came to life. "We're in business!"

"Good. Aim it towards the dig site." Daniel glanced around and picked up a brick and a discarded iron pipe. Making sure the brake was engaged, Daniel pressed the accelerator down with the brick and braced it against the driver's seat with the metal pipe.

"Alicia, can you go to the back and set the timer?"

Alicia nodded and disappeared around the back of the truck. When she yelled "Ready!" Daniel disengaged the brake and leapt clear of the truck.

With brakes disengaged and the engine on full power, the truck sped forward with surprising speed. It didn't take long for the Covenant sentries to notice the noisy truck barreling down the street towards them. The truck's cab was soon perforated with plasma bolts and needler rounds in an attempt to kill the nonexistent driver. When it was clear that the truck wasn't going to stop, the Covenant troops started running for their lives. The truck then disappeared over the lip of the pit and both Daniel and Alicia could hear an audible _whump_ as the truck impacted the bottom of the pit. Several tense seconds later the dig site was instantly engulfed in a massive blast of fire and light, as if a volcano were erupting. Daniel then saw what looked like to be a Covenant version of a bulldozer, flying through the air like a broken plastic toy, land several blocks away.

The explosion succeeded magnificently in its dual purpose of distracting the Covenant as well as slamming the brakes on their little side operation. The Covenant responded in a lightning fast manner, and made it very clear that they were _not happy_. Easily over a hundred ground troops and at least one or two Spectres and Ghosts marched down from the town center to investigate the blast.

"I believe that's our cue to leave." Alicia pointed out.

"Good idea."

As they retreated, however, neither of them expected to run into a Covenant recon patrol, consisting of a pair of Grunts and Jackals. Daniel panicked and fired wildly, embarrassingly missing all four Covenant soldiers at literally point blank range. Alicia, meanwhile, had far more success in reacting to the surprise encounter. Two quick bursts took down the Jackals before they had a chance to duck behind their shields. Alicia then yanked Daniel into cover before the surviving Grunts could return fire, though it was a wasted gesture. The Grunts decided that their time was better spent to try and put as much distance between themselves and the Marines as possible.

"Damnit!" Alicia cursed. "We have to take them down before-"

But it was too late. The Grunts apparently managed to get the word out to their comrades investigating the dig site. Within seconds, Daniel and Alicia could hear the familiar hum of Covenant engines closing in on their position.

"Definitely not as planned." Alicia sighed.

Without hesitating for a second, Daniel and Alicia sprinted down the street back towards the motor pool. Even though Daniel was painfully aware that he was not at peak physical condition anymore, he was filled with so much adrenaline that he felt that he could break world records. He could feel the heat of plasma bolts as they passed both him and Alicia, and for a brief second, he believed that they weren't going to make it.

Suddenly, two shafts of light that blazed in the dying glow of the setting sun streaked over Daniel and Alicia's heads. The two armor piercing rockets, shrieking like flaming banshees, struck the two Spectres pursuing Daniel and Alicia, blowing them to pieces and scattering the Covenant troops following close behind. Like an Arthurian knight on his horse, Welkins and one of his men braked to a stop in front of Daniel and Alicia in a transport-pattern Warthog.

"Come on!" Welkins yelled. "Get in!"

The two Marines scrambled into the back of the Warthog. Daniel barely got one leg in when Welkins jammed the accelerator, speeding away from the approaching Covenant wave. Welkins' rocket-toting squadmate banged off two more rockets, which streaked off into the dusk to destroy a Ghost. The Covenant began returning fire, but at that point, the Warthog was already gone.

**Several Miles Away**

Daniel was initially caught off guard when Welkins finally caught up with the rest of the squad at the rendezvous point outside of Perfection. There were easily at least a hundred liberated prisoners milling about with a sizeable convoy of vehicles, both military and civilian.

"I see you and your men were busy while we were away." Daniel remarked. "What do we have?"

"Well, I don't exactly have exact numbers." Welkins scratched his head. "We've rescued roughly a hundred people, and we've snagged quite a number of vehicles as well. We've got about six Warthogs, four combat and two transport, two trucks, an ambulance, and about eight other civilian vehicles."

"What about the supplies?" Alicia asked cautiously.

"Well, that's a bit more problematic." Welkins bit his lip. "We managed to pull some stuff that was left over from the start of the invasion. It was pretty simple, since the Covvies really didn't care about stuff they couldn't use, but the problem is that nobody's taken any sort of proper count of it all.

"I'll take a look at it." Daniel volunteered. He'd spent many long nights filling out paperwork, and this didn't seem much different.

"Good luck to you then, sir." Welkins smiled. "I'm going to go through the civilians to see which of them knows how to point a gun."

"Good." Daniel nodded. "We'll need all the fighters we've got."

"I'll go and set up a perimeter then." Alicia said. "There's no guarantee the Covvies won't try and pursue us."

With his two newly-made comrades off on their separate duties, Daniel decided to start taking an inventory of the supplies Welkins and his men had managed to make off with. As he meandered his way throughout the makeshift camp, he noticed many people looking at him as the passed. Many would nod, or give silent thanks to him. What Daniel noticed the most though, was that something about these people now seemed remarkably different. It seemed to be the newfound shine in their eyes and the small smiles on their faces. Apparently, having their status as "hopeless prisoners doomed to a horrible death" upgraded to "liberated refugees with a fairly high chance of a horrible death" did wonders to their morale. Daniel returned the smiles, nods, and thanks that he received and got to work. As he started writing down all of the available equipment and supplies, Daniel felt the pit in his stomach growing deeper and deeper. There weren't a lot of supplies to go around. If it had just been him, Alicia, and Welkins' squad, then they would've been able to survive in the desert for up to a month. However, with about hundred civilians saddled on them now, his projections were shortened to just a couple of days, even with rationing.

**Three Hours Later**

By this point, pretty much all of the civilians were asleep, huddled inside or against the vehicles for some measure of warmth. However, some of Welkins' men stood steadfast at the edges of the camp, while Daniel, Alicia, and Welkins, now the de facto leaders of the refugee band, held a hasty conference.

"I and my men made a complete count." Welkins said over the dim light of the gas heater they were huddled around. "We have exactly eighty six refugees with us. Four were captured Guardsmen, fourteen have experience with weapons, but the rest are basically just civilians. About twelve of them are injured, but they're mostly minor with the exception of two critical cases, who we're keeping in the ambulance."

"Yeah, well, supplies are our biggest problem at the moment." Daniel sighed. "With rationing, we only have enough to see us through for three days, five at the most. We're going to have to find a way to get more supplies."

"It's not going to be easy." Alicia said. "I've been out in this desert for a week, and there's not much out there. It was just me and I had the fortune of having my own supplies and running into clerk-boy over here."

"I think I have an idea." Welkins pulled a tattered map out of his pocket. "The planetary government had set up a network of hidden military supply depots in the event of a mass invasion or insurrection that would force the military underground."

"I hope that means what I think it means." Daniel said hopefully.

"One of these depots is right over here." Welkins pointed to a circled blotch north of Perfection. "If we can get there, we'll be able to restock supplies, but there's a catch."

"What is it?"

"You said we only have enough supplies for five days, and at my best estimate, the drive there is going to take up to a week."

"We'd all die of dehydration by then." Alicia blanched.

"Wait." Daniel narrowed his eyes as he examined the map further. "What's this here?"

"Another town." Welkins craned his head closer to read the name. "Springtown."

"You'd think we'd be able to get supplies there?" Daniel asked.

"Possible." Welkins nodded thoughtfully. "It's a fair sized town, plus it sits on a natural spring, so there should be plenty of water there, assuming the Covenant haven't bombed the whole place to hell, of course."

"We don't have much a choice." Alicia concluded. "We're just going to have to go for it."

Their deliberations continued throughout the night. After deciding on how to best ration supplies, figuring out the most fuel efficient route to their eventual destination, and predicting the level of Covenant resistance, the three leaders worked up a plan to organize the convoy. Welkins' squadmates, who had been fighting the Covenant since they had touched down, were undoubtedly the most experienced men in the convoy. They would then be split up in to smaller units and be put in charge of the civilians to train them into a fighting force. However, they unanimously agreed that the regular civilians weren't ready to be armed yet, so weaponry would be restricted to just those with prior experience. It wasn't as if they had the weapons to go around anyway.

"Alright," Daniel clapped his hands, satisfied, "we should get some sleep."

"We'll have to move out by dawn." Alicia said. "We have to stay ahead of whatever the Covenant might send out to find us."

"Good idea." Daniel silently groaned inside. He had long since thrown aside the ridiculous combat sleep schedule (or lack thereof) that the rigorous Marine lifestyle required. Working in a civilian job, Daniel had long grown accustomed to regular hours and decent sleep.

"I'll spread the word to my men." Welkins acknowledged.

"Man, it's nice to have a few more bodies to stay on watch." Alicia yawned as Welkins disappeared into the darkness. "I haven't had any decent sleep for weeks."

**Next Morning**

Though there were initial problems rousing the refugees from their much deserve sleep, Welkins and his men managed to pile everybody into the vehicles and get them moving just a few hours after dawn. So far, there weren't any attempts from the Covenant in the town to pursue them. Daniel suspected that they were busy trying to cover their hides for the loss of the dig site they were running, but he couldn't be sure. Either way, it was better to get as much distance between them and the Covenant as possible.

The first three days of the trip were uneventful. There was absolutely no sign of the Covenant for miles around, so Alicia felt it was fairly safe for the vehicles to drive at full speed. The small convoy kicked up a massive dust cloud in its wake, but nothing was around to notice it. Another bit of good news was that now that they were getting some proper food, the refugees' physical condition was beginning to improve rather significantly. The fourteen civilians familiar with weapons were assigned to Welkins' men for training and leadership, and were beginning to pick up on the military lifestyle. However, something nagged at Daniel. While the majority of the trainees were either policemen or gun owners, five of them were ex, or even currently serving, convicts. However, four of them seemed harmless enough. They really were nothing more than local troublemakers or wannabe gangsters.

Then there was Jerrid.

There was something _off_ about the ex con. Whenever asked about what he was jailed for, he'd always mumble something about tax evasion, but everybody knew it was a lie, and what made it worse was that Jerrid knew that they knew and didn't care. Daniel also noted Jerrid's cold, lifeless eyes that seemed to suck the life out of you whenever you were the target of its gaze. What made the whole thing worse was his smile, though. Whenever Jerrid smiled, it seemed to Daniel as if even the devil himself would trade his soul to get it. That said, Daniel clearly tried to avoid Jerrid as much as possible. Alicia likewise kept her distance, as his sheer presence made her uncharacteristically nervous. When asked about it, Alicia merely said that Jerrid reminded her of some creepy uncle she had. Fortunately, Welkins had Jerrid put under his watch, so that the Guard sergeant could keep a close eye on him.

On the fourth day, the situation was beginning to deteriorate slightly. One of the civilian vehicles failed to start, and the resident mechanics had to jumpstart it. It was a classic sign that the fuel cell was starting to die out. Without a fresh source of hydrogen or electricity, the vehicles would eventually lose power to their engines and die out. Speaking of which, water and food were predictably running low as well. Their morale was still generally high, but Daniel could feel the anxiety rising among the refugees.

"I see the town." Alicia pointed ahead, breaking Daniel's thoughts.

Sure enough, Springtown lay ahead, and surprisingly, it seemed to be in fairly good condition. True, there were signs of some minor damage, but overall, the town was intact.

"Alright." Daniel took a quick look at the convoy. "The rest of the convoy will stay here while we scout the town. When we figure it's safe, we'll signal for you to come in. Welkins, you stay behind and keep an eye on the convoy."

"Yes sir." Welkins nodded.

With that, Daniel, Alicia, and Corporal Talls, one of Welkins' men, took off in one of the armed Warthogs toward Springtown. As they entered, they saw what could have passed for a normal, everyday town, except for the fact that the streets were abandoned. There was some minor damage, but it looked to have originated from rioting rather than actual combat. The lack of any signs of fighting or bodies suggested to Daniel that the people of Springtown decided to pack up and leave. Not a surprising decision, given the Covenant invasion.

As they moved deeper into the town, they noticed that all of the stores they passed had once been boarded up and sealed. However, it appeared that looters had come through the town, as wooden boards had been pried open, glass windows were shattered, and there were splintered frames where doors had been kicked in.

"Somebody here's been busy." Alicia remarked.

"Let's just hope they're still not around." Talls said.

After fifteen minutes of patrolling the lifeless town, the Marines were about to conclude that it was free of any Covenant, until something caught Alicia's eye.

"Stop." She told Talls.

"What?" Talls hit the brakes. "What's wrong?"

"Those lights." Alicia pointed to a nearby building. "They're on, which means this building still has power."

"Survivors? Holdouts too stubborn to evacuate?" Daniel wondered.

"We're going to find out." Alicia armed her rifle and hopped out of the Warthog. Daniel and Talls quickly followed suit.

As they approached the building, Daniel noticed that it was a hospital. No surprise that it was still powered, as all modern hospitals were required to have a secondary power source in case the main power grid was knocked out. However, the fact that the generators were still running meant that there was a good chance somebody was around to maintain them. As they entered the hospital, they saw the lobby and the halls were littered with trash, refuse, overturned gurneys, and all kinds of hospital equipment covering the ground. The Marines carefully picked their way through the debris, methodically swept the rooms they passed. However, they were all empty, at least, until they reached one of the main wards.

"You two, stay at the door and cover me." Alicia said to Daniel and Talls. "I'll check this room out."

Rifle raised, Alicia silently moved into the darkened ward like a wraith. Seeing no immediate threat, she neared one of the beds to inspect it. She realized there was something under the covers. Believing it to be a person, she reached over and pulled the covers down and gasped at what she saw.

"Is something wrong?" Daniel asked, poking his head through the door.

"You can say that." Alicia said, trying to slow her racing heart.

There was indeed a person in the bed, but he had been dead for quite some time. However, his death wasn't caused by any kind of sickness, wound, or lack of care.

"He was shot." Daniel observed as he came to inspect Alicia's discovery.

"Not just that." Alicia pointed to the single ragged hole in the middle of the former patient's forehead. "He was executed… by a human weapon.'

"Who in the world would do that?" Talls asked.

Neither Daniel nor Alicia had an answer.


	4. Killing For Money Since 1994

"_In other news, five soldiers from J&R were arrested Monday on charges of murder and assault during a raid on the Covenant held town of Arian. Authorities believe that this was an isolated incident, and there are no plans to investigate J&R itself."_

_-UNSC News Network_

Chapter 4: Killing For Money Since 1994

**Springtown General Hospital**

Unnerved by the seemingly pointless slaying, the Marines continued sweeping the first floor, and were dismayed to find even more bodies similar to the first one they found. Inside Daniel's head, thoughts raced in an attempt to rationalize what had happened here. Were these patients victims of neglect? Was it some sort of sick form of euthanasia? There was simply no way to tell.

"This ward's clear." Alicia announced, walking back into the hall.

"This one, too." Talls confirmed.

With the first floor clear, that only left the second floor. It was a good thing this was a small rural hospital, or it would have taken just the three of them days to search every nook and cranny. However, as they neared the stairwell, Alicia's grip on her rifle tightened in anxiety. Daniel remembered from his urban combat training that stairwells were often the most lethal part of breaching a hostile structure. An entire attack force would be funneled into a central location, which would turn their numbers from an advantage into a stumbling block, and the enemy would _always_ have the high ground. Daniel remembered exercises where entire assault teams of a dozen or more Marines would be stopped in their tracks by one or two riflemen posted on the top of a stairwell.

"I can take point if you want." Daniel offered.

"Thanks for the concern." Alicia smiled. "But I'm pretty sure I can handle a flight of stairs."

With careful precision, Alicia slowly stalked up the stairs, making sure to keep her rifle pointed toward the upper level. As she rounded the corner, she caught sight of the end of a barrel and quickly reversed direction, diving away as a pair of shotgun blasts peppered the wall behind her with buckshot.

"Cease fire!" Alicia yelled. "We're Marines!"

"Like hell you are!" A distant, slightly rustic voice yelled from the second floor. "You're probably those damn mercs come back to finish the job!"

The three Marines looked at each other. It was evident that something had the man up there spooked. However, they couldn't just leave the man up there, at least not without trying to reason with him first.

"Okay, what's it going to take to prove to you that we're friendly?" Daniel yelled back.

"One of you comes up with hands raised, no weapons, and we'll decide for ourselves."\

Daniel raised an eyebrow. Just one grammatical slip in the man's line suggested to Daniel that the man wasn't the only survivor holed up in this hospital.

"Oh yeah? If you want me to give up my weapon, how about I shove it straight up your ass?" Alicia yelled back sarcastically. The man upstairs was obviously a civilian, since any Marine with a decent amount of common sense would know that it was a cardinal sin to ask a Marine to part with their weapon.

"Whoa, calm down there." Daniel said. "The guy up there is just scared."

"Don't tell me you're actually going to go up there." Alicia blinked. "That's suicide."

"I don't know why you're so worried about me not having a gun." Daniel cracked a weak smile. "Besides, I can't hit a damn thing with it anyway."

"Yeah, well what if they decide to just shoot you the moment you go up?" Alicia asked.

Daniel raised an eyebrow at Alicia's uncharacteristic concern over his well-being. "You make it sound like I'm marching into a room full of Elites. It's just a bunch of civilians scared out of their minds."

"Still…"

"How about this?" Daniel grinned half-jokingly. "If I do get shot, you and Talls here can call in Welkins and bring down the full fury of the UNSC Marine Corps down on the heads of these guys? Deal?"

"Fine." Alicia sighed.

Daniel then handed over his rifle, sidearm, and grenades to Alicia, took a deep breath, and marched up the stairs, arms raised.

"Alright, I'm coming up!" Daniel announced, half expecting to get a faceful of buckshot as a response.

"Slowly then, with arms raised!" The man cautioned.

As he reached the second landing, Daniel saw a makeshift barricade of tables, desk chairs, and gurneys erected in front of the door to the second floor. Behind the barricade stood two figures. One was a janitor armed with an antique double barreled shotgun and the second was a wounded Helljumper with one arm in a sling and the other holding an M6D pistol.

"He's a Marine." The Helljumper confirmed, lowering his pistol. This seemed to instill some relief in the janitor, who also lowered his weapon.

"Thank god." The janitor sighed.

"Private Henderson, reporting for duty, sir!" The wounded Helljumper saluted Daniel.

"At ease, Private." Daniel returned the salute and turned to the janitor. "I've got two more Marines on the first floor. Is it okay if I bring them up?"

"Sure." The janitor nodded. "I'll go and tell Dr. Sorel the good news."

A few minutes later, a rather tired looking, haggard man in a doctor's coat arrived and he greeted the Marines with a weak smile. "Well, we've been wondering when you'd get here. As you can see, the wait wasn't kind on us. I'm Dr. Sorel."

"Captain Avers." Daniel returned the greeting. Curious about the situation downstairs, he then asked, "What happened here?"

"It's a long story." Sorel sighed.

"We've got time." Talls responded. "I just got off the line with the Sergeant. He can get the whole convoy up here in about half an hour."

"Henderson, Neil, could you please go check the perimeter?" Sorel asked the Marine and the janitor.

"Sure thing, Doctor." Neil the Janitor nodded and went down the stairs with Henderson, shotgun in hand.

"Talls, go with them." Daniel ordered.

"Yes sir." Talls nodded and scurried down the stairs after Henderson and Neil.

"So, back to the point, what happened here?" Alicia asked. "Why are you still in this town?"

"It all started a few weeks ago, or was it days? I've completely lost track of time." Sorel sighed. "Anyways, it was shortly after the Covenant showed up and began landing on the surface. Once it was clear they were concentrating on the south, people started packing up and moving north. It was a complete mess. The local Marine and Guard units were completely overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of evacuees streaming through. Because they had to go and fight off the Covenant, the local government turned to security contractors to keep the peace."

"That's nothing new." Alicia tilted her head in curiosity. "It's common for the UNSC to contract private military forces to secure population centers and other civilian areas of interest."

"Yes, well, something was different about this group." Sorel sighed. "Once the majority of the evacuees left, the battle was already beginning to turn sour and the few military units that were left were frantically falling back, and ignored small towns like this one. With no other military presence, the contractors here believed they would gain more from just looting the town rather than protecting it."

"You mean, they just started tearing the place apart?" Daniel blinked. "Nobody stopped them?"

"There wasn't anybody that could." Sorel shook his head sadly, wincing at as memories he wanted to forget surfaced to his mind again. "They shot anybody who protested, and they started executing the wounded here because they were liabilities to them."

"Obviously they didn't finish the job." Alicia pointed out.

"Right. Me, Henderson, Neil, and a some skeleton staff who stayed behind managed to evacuate what patients we could to the second floor and we fortified ourselves up here. After we repelled a few intrusion attempts, the contractors decided we weren't worth the effort and left us alone."

"When was this?" Daniel wondered if these contractors could still be around.

"A week or two ago, but they still occasionally stop by to pick up more supplies and to harass us." Sorel replied. "We were too afraid to try and leave the hospital, in fear of being ambushed by them."

"Well you have nothing to worry about now." Alicia said confidently. "We haven't seen anybody else when we came in, and those bastards do come back, we'll be here to kick their asses."

"Thank you." Sorel smiled weakly, as if it was something he had forgotten to do.

"So then how many people do you have holed up in here?" Daniel looked around the ransacked rooms and halls. "You said you had some extra staff and some patients up here."

"Including Henderson and Neil, I've got a nurse, two orderlies, and eight patients." Sorel said, leading the Marines down the hall. "Two of them are fairly stable, and the rest, well, let's just say its better I show you."

Sorel stopped at the last door in the hall. He drew a keycard out of his pocket and used it to unlock the door. As the trio stepped inside the room, they were ambushed by about a half-dozen small figures.

"Mr. Sorel!" The combined voices of six children cried out in a chorus. "You're back!"

"I was only gone for five minutes!" Sorel said, hugging each of the children.

Daniel paused. From his initial estimate, the ages of the children ranged from ages six to nine, and were divided evenly by sex, with three boys and three girls. They wore regular street clothing, though they were ragged and dirty from weeks of infrequent washing and care. He then looked over to Alicia, and was surprised because it looked as if she had become a completely different person. Gone was the somewhat aloof, depressed, frustrated, professional conscript she usually pretended to be. She gave one of her few genuine smiles as when she saw the children.

"I didn't know you had such a powerful maternal instinct." Daniel wisecracked.

"There's a lot you still don't know about me." Alicia said, still smiling as she returned the hugs the children were giving her.

Daniel blinked when he heard these words. He realized that they were true, but were not really meant to be an attack in any way. He'd only been with Alicia for a few days, and he was already feeling as if they had been childhood friends or something. It was a feeling that Daniel couldn't shake off, and didn't really want to stop.

Alicia proved to be a rather spectacular role model for the children. In the space of minutes, they were already calling her "Auntie Alicia" and cheered when she pulled out one of her last candy bars she had been carrying with her.

"A rambunctious little lot, aren't they?" Daniel said as he slipped in beside Sorel.

"The one time I'm grateful that the day care center was on the center floor." Sorel replied with a weak grin. "These kids are all orphans, or I'm pretty sure they are. They came in with the wounded that were brought here…"

"Jesus, do they know?" Daniel blanched.

"Yeah." Sorel sighed. "But kids are interesting. They're a lot more resilient than you'd think. When they realized that their current role models were gone, they naturally switched to new ones."

"Well then our convoy is going to get a nasty shock then." Daniel smiled when his radio suddenly buzzed.

"Captain, we've got contact!" Talls reported.

"Report." Daniel narrowed his eyes.

"Not sure. They're Human, but definitely not from our convoy. They're still at least fifteen minutes out."

"What about Henderson and Neil? What do they think?"

"Just a second sir, Henderson's coming on the line." Talls said.

"Captain." Henderson's voice filled Daniel's ears now. "It's those mercs from before. They're back."

"Are you sure?" Daniel said, not wanting to accidentally shoot up another unit of Marines.

"Definitely." Talls confirmed. "They're not wearing Marine standard issue. Its custom armor with some kind of corporate logo I can't make out."

"Damnit." Daniel seethed. "Don't engage. Just keep your distance and keep track of them."

"Roger." Talls said before cutting the link.

"What do you think they're here for?" Daniel asked Sorel.

"Probably to raid the town for more supplies." Sorel shrugged. "They've been doing it for the past few weeks now. They generally leave us alone though since they don't want to risk any losses for so little gain."

"Contact! Contact!" Talls yelled desperately through the radio. "They're all over us! Shit!"

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion and the transmission devolved into static.

"Talls! Talls!" Daniel yelled, trying to get a response.

"What's wrong?" Alicia asked, her expression suddenly hardening.

"Apparently the troublemakers are back." Daniel armed his rifle and turned to Sorel. "Can you hold the fort here?"

"Yes, of course." Sorel nodded. "My staff has 'appropriated' equipment from the contractors we killed and I've learned in the past few weeks that it was a good idea to learn to handle weapons."

"Alright." Daniel nodded to Alicia. "Let's go."

**Randy's Eats  
Earth**

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the entirety of the planet was in a firestorm of gossip and rumors. David had finally decided to drop the ball and had the will publically read. He particularly made sure that the will would find its way into the hands of a judge who just happened to love huge, public, and most importantly, controversial cases. The fact that news crews from at least seven different networks just happened to be in the courtroom at the time was just icing on the cake.

Of course, the news of this mystery heir to Bellarius' fortune was dominating the newsnets, completely supplanting the usual wartime propaganda. David suspected that the information warfare specialists in the Office of Naval Intelligence were having a field day with this. Anything that could distract the public from the war was a gold mine for them. This story would get milked for every ounce it had.

Right now, David was having lunch with one of his private investigators, Bogard Bluth. Bogard was an ex-ONI operative, and even though he was officially retired, he still had considerable connections in both the intelligence and law enforcement communities. He now made his living as a private investigator and consultant for high-level clients.

"Wow, this job is a real doozy, you know that?" Bogard grinned as he took a bite out of his turkey sandwich. "I really pity the poor girl, what with having to deal with the wrath of Bellarius' kids."

"So that means you found something?" David asked, leaning forward.

"Oh, I found plenty. They're pretty damn terrible at covering their tracks." Bogard laughed, sipping his soda.

"So give me the rundown then."

"Well, they called the regular list of guys and most of them are onboard." Bogard said. "You know, Booth, Alter, Duran, Harvey, Ruby, the usual suspects."

"What about Wily?"

"God forbid." Bogard laughed. "He's out of their price range by several magnitudes. Plus, this isn't his kind of hit. He goes for higher level players, like Fleet Admirals and political figures, and he's pretty damn subtle about it. That's one bullet your client managed to dodge."

"Then what's got you so worried then?" David asked.

"It's not just hitmen they're contracting." Bogard leaned forward and whispered, "They've got PMCs involved too."

"I'm not surprised." David shook his head. "Even in an honestly run PMC, they've always got at least one or two guys in them willing to do 'side jobs'."

"Then you wouldn't need me to tell you that the UNSC has contracted at least five PMCs on Rama II." Bogard sniffed. "Which means approximately eight thousand well armed, well trained, potential assassins are milling around with your little heiress."

"Thanks, Boe." David got out of his seat and dropped several bills on the table. "This should cover it."

"Ah, there is no other business transaction more venerable than the good old fashioned exchange of information." Bogard grinned, pocketing the bills.

"I'd love to know where you get all that info." David grinned.

"Ah, you know spies." Bogard laughed. "Bunch of whiny little girls!"

"Weren't you a spy?"

"I'm an _ex_-spy." Bogard sniffed. "There's difference."

"I'm sure." David said before exiting the restaurant. He then reached for his Slipspace phone.

**Springtown**

By the time Daniel and Alicia closed in on the source of the gunfire, they found that everything was in a complete mess. They saw Neil and Talls taking cover behind a derelict car exchanging fire with a over two dozen black armored figures with three armed Warthogs.

"We have to help them." Daniel said, getting ready to move in.

"Wait!" Alicia stopped him. "We're at their flank. It's the perfect chance to ambush them."

"We'd better hurry then." Daniel took another look at the battle. "It doesn't look as if they'll last long."

"Don't worry, I've got it handled." Alicia raised her battle rifle and peered through the scope, zeroing in on the nearest target. She focused on one of the Warthog gunners and carefully nestled the crosshairs over his head. She then glanced at his nametag and whispered, "Sorry about this, Emille."

Alicia then pulled the trigger. The three round burst hit a bit lower than Alicia had intended. Instead of a clean headshot, the rounds instead tore through poor Trooper Emille's throat. The mercenary grabbed his throat in an attempt to stem the tide of blood gushing out and gurgled as fell off the Warthog as his final agonizing moments passed by.

Almost instantly, Alicia snapped to the other two Warthog gunners and took them down with precision bursts. The mercenaries still didn't quite realize that they were under attack, which gave her and Daniel a chance to wreak more havoc. They unloaded everything they had into the tightly packed enemy formation, mowing down a good number of them. At this point, the enemy squad began to lose its coherency and individual members began breaking off or falling back. Sensing weakness, Neil and Talls broke cover and attacked with renewed vigor, adding to the Marines' mighty casualty count.

"Is that all of them?" Neil asked.

"Pretty much." Alicia said, inspecting several of the bodies on the ground. "I've counted about sixteen bodies here, and the rest ran off. I don't think they're coming back any time soon."

"Where's Henderson?" Daniel asked, looking around for the missing Marine.

"He didn't make it." Talls shook his head sadly. "They didn't even pause to ask us who we were. They just shot on sight."

"Bastards." Alicia spat. "Just who the hell do they think they are?"

"Well, let's see." Daniel bent down and examined several of the bodies for any identifying item or logo. He saw their shoulder emblems, which was a silver snake in a tight coil, fangs bared and ready to attack. "Silver Serpents."

"What?" Neil asked curiously.

"It's a PMC." Daniel explained. "One of the biggest employed by the UNSC. They've been plagued with a lot of lawsuits over the years for alleged misconduct, human rights violations, and war crimes."

"Well that explains things." Alicia sighed. "Probably a good reason why they weren't proper Marines."

"Anyways, we shouldn't stay here for long." Daniel stood up. "I think it would be safe to assume that these guys were part of a larger unit. Let's just take what we can use and get out of here."

With that, Daniel, Alicia, Talls, and Neil appropriated as much salvageable weapons and gear as they could and loaded them into the first two Warthogs. They also loaded Henderson's body into the third one, feeling that it wouldn't be right to leave him lying out there to rot with the Silver Serpents.

It took a while to navigate the abandoned streets to return to the hospital, but by the time the small trio of Warthogs arrived, the convoy had already reached the hospital and were busy evacuating the inhabitants within. Daniel could see several people driving a few abandoned ambulances to add to their small fleet of medical vehicles.

"Good to see you're okay." Welkins sighed in relief as he met Daniel and Alicia. "Sorel told me everything that happened. Can't believe those guys would sink so low."

"There's no guarantee that there aren't more of them out there." Daniel warned. "We'll have to stay on alert, and all of our foraging parties can't leave without armed escorts."

"I was thinking the same." Welkins agreed. "I'll give us forty eight hours to grab whatever these snakes didn't manage to loot, and we'll pack up and keep moving."

"I'll go out and see to it that those guys who retreated don't come back and cause any trouble." Alicia said, arming her rifle and grabbing several fresh clips.

"You need any backup?" Welkins asked.

"That's okay." Alicia gave a rather fake smile. "You need your men to protect the civilians here. I should be fine on my own."

"I thought," Daniel said as he grabbed several fresh rifle clips as well, "that the meaning of _Semper Fi_ meant that we never let a Marine do a job alone."

"Th- thanks." Alicia stammered, caught off guard by the unexpected kindness.

From what he saw, Welkins was savvy enough to know when to bow out. "Well I need to go manage the foraging efforts. Just remember, forty eight hours and we're packing up and leaving."

**J&R Mobile Command Center  
Third Division "Silver Serpents"  
Currently operating in enemy-held zone on Rama II**

"Major, we've just received a report from one of our scout squads." Lieutenant Wilson, who was the communications officer, announced.

"Is that so?" Major Beck Gotts frowned as he looked at his data screens. "What's the situation?"

"Not good." Wilson paused, afraid of incurring Gotts' wrath. "They reported running into enemy resistance at Springtown and were forced to fall back."

"Typical." Gotts sighed. "What's the damage?"

"Eighty percent casualties." Wilson gulped.

"What." Gotts raised an eyebrow. "Explain. Now."

"They ran into some Marines or something, tore em up pretty bad." Wilson said. "They managed to get a single picture of the attackers."

Gotts glanced at his screen and saw an image begin to resolve, showing a rather poor quality shot of two Marines gunning down several of Gotts' men. He frowned as he examined the picture, but decided to worry about it later. "Is there anything else?"

"We've also got an shadow job." Wilson added. "It just came in three hours ago."

"Just a second." Gotts flipped switch on his control board. It activated various anti-eavesdropping devices and countermeasures to prevent any data or conversations from escaping the command center and falling into the wrong hands. "Alright, go."

"It's a hit order." Wilson handed a printout to Gotts. "There's a name, but that's pretty much it. Kind of odd, since the secondary target has more info than the primary one."

Gotts flipped the page over and took one look at the picture attached to it. He then blinked and turned back to his screen, putting the picture up against it. He found that the two faces, apart from several years of age and some bad resolution, was the exact same person.

"Well." Gotts grinned. "It seems like half our job is already done for us. Which means…"

He looked at the second Marine who was standing next to Daniel. He was immediately stricken by her appearance, and was almost absolutely sure that it was this Jennifer Vail that was described in the report. Why else would the pair be moving around and fighting together? He grinned as he stared at female Marine. He'd do the hit all right, but not without having a little bit of fun first…


	5. Cabin Fever

AN: As a response to DennisK, from what I can infer from your review, this is my official response. Alicia and Jennifer are completely SEPARATE characters and were always originally intended to be so. I just wanted to make that clear, as there was apparently some misunderstanding from the last chapter.

"_Yeah, there are times where we did some pretty crazy things. Some of them were a pure violation of all common sense. Didn't mean that we didn't have a fucking blast, though."_

_-Private Donnie Banks, recounting his involvement in the infamous "Tapioca Jacuzzi" prank at the Reach Officer Training Facility_

Chapter 5: Cabin Fever

**Outskirts of Springtown**

"We really should stop." Daniel said as he saw Springtown slowly disappearing over the distant. "We're getting really far from the town."

"We've almost caught up with them." Alicia said, pressing down the accelerator of their Warthog.

"Don't you think you're taking this a bit too far?" Daniel asked cautiously.

"And if I am?" Alicia glared at a Daniel, as if daring him to respond.

"I'm just saying, vendettas aren't healthy." Daniel warned. He'd seen these sort of things boil over in courtrooms, and outside them as well. None of them ended well.

"I'll keep that in mind." Alicia stamped down on the brake and brought the Warthog to a stop.

"What's wrong?" Daniel asked.

"I think they might be close." Alicia jumped out of the Warthog and checked the vehicle tracks in the sand. "These tracks are recent. They're probably right over that dune."

Suddenly, both Marines heard something behind them, though they couldn't tell what it was. They turned to see a trio of grenades tumbling down the dune through the sand, coming to a stop right under the Warthog.

'Shit!" Daniel grabbed Alicia and shoved her to the ground before diving down himself. The explosions shredded the vehicle, sending hot shrapnel and debris flying everywhere. Alicia wasted no time in rolling onto her back, rifle raised and pointing towards the top of the dune. She caught sight of a pair of figures at the top and firing a quick burst. One of the figures spasmed fell limp, sliding down the dune like a rag doll. The second figure quickly disappeared back over the edge.

"Come on!" Alicia grabbed Daniel and helped him up to his feet. "We can't let them get away!"

As they scaled the dune, Daniel did a quick check on the fallen soldier and confirmed that the man was in fact dead. The burst had hit him square in the chest, and at least one of the rounds managed to thwart his body armor. Daniel continued up the dune and saw Alicia crouched at the top, tracking the second soldier with her battle rifle. The soldier was quickly trying to make his way to a parked truck when Alicia fired three bursts. Her target then toppled to the ground and didn't move again. Daniel was about to compliment Alicia on her marksmanship, but then thought against it. It certainly didn't feel right, probably because they were gunning down fellow Humans rather than Covenant.

"Are you okay, Alicia?" Daniel asked. "You seem to be taking this whole rogue PMC thing pretty seriously."

"And if I am?" Alicia growled, her fierce eyes glaring at Daniel.

"I'm just saying, you should really calm down." Daniel sighed.

"I'll keep that in mind." Alicia finally started to relax. "Police the bodies. Since our ride is wrecked, I'll check out the truck."

As Alicia walked away towards the truck, Daniel felt a vibration in his pocket and realized it was his phone. Making sure Alicia was out of sight, he pulled it out and activated it.

"Daniel?" David's fuzzy voice buzzed through the phone.

"Who else could it be?" Daniel responded, exasperated.

"Okay, I haven't got long." David continued, his tone feeling rushed. "The word's out on Miss Vail's sudden cash windfall, and everybody's looking for a piece."

"More trouble then?" Daniel sighed.

"Of course." David confirmed. "By this time tomorrow, all sorts of hitmen and assassins are going to be making their way to Rama II, and I'm pretty sure the PMCs are going to try and get in on the action too. The dirty ones, at least."

"Thanks for the thumbs up."

"So, any word on our new client yet?" David asked.

"Nothing yet. It's pretty hard getting around here, for obvious reasons."

"Well, keep going at it then, and watch your back."

"Thanks."

The phone then clicked off as David cut off the connection. Daniel sighed and secreted the phone away in his pocket again. He wasn't sure if he should tell Alicia about this or not. He still hadn't told her the whole story, and he was still hesitant, even though Alicia was probably the only other person on this planet he implicitly trusted. He was also pretty sure she didn't quite fully believe his roughshod cover story. Alicia seemed too sharp to be fooled easily.

Meanwhile, Alicia was busy inspecting the truck, but found herself getting distracted, which almost never happened and annoyed her to no end. Part of it was her simmering anger at the PMC's abuse of her power. How dare they, just because the UNSC was willing to turn a blind eye to some of their activities. She despised that sort of behavior. Shaking her head angrily, Alicia unlocked the rear cargo door of the truck and pulled it open. Inside were crates full of various consumer goods. It was mostly electronics and other highly demanded commercial products, the sort of stuff looters generally went for first. In other words, it was completely useless junk. She shut the cargo door and then walked around to the front of the truck, but already realized that the prospects of it running weren't very good. She could see an open repair kit and tools scattered in the sand, implying that the vehicle was suffering from mechanical problems. Sure enough, as she reached the cab, she saw that one of the truck's wheels was damaged. It wasn't a simple missing hubcap or flat tire though. It looked as if the front axle had snapped, which would explain why these two Serpents were still stuck all the way out here. However, that was little comfort to Alicia. The damage was too severe for her or Daniel to repair in the field. She decided to tell Daniel the bad news when she caught him standing in the sand. He was talking on what appeared to be a phone, but to whom and about what, Alicia couldn't tell. A dozen possibilities coursed through her head but she decided to keep it to herself for the time being.

"Well, bad news." Alicia said as she walked up to Daniel. "The truck isn't going anywhere."

"So we're stuck here then." Daniel gaped.

"Ah, we've walked before." Alicia said.

"With a forty eight hour timeframe?" Daniel raised an eyebrow.

"We'll figure something out." Alicia shrugged.

**J&R Mobile Command Center**

Gotts looked down on his strategic map and stroked his chin. From what few reports he had received, Springtown was now occupied by a rather sizeable military force of at least a hundred men. He knew that they probably wouldn't be staying there for long, and he also knew that a frontal assault now was unwise, knowing as little about the situation as he did now. Instead, Gotts intended to get the measure of the enemy first before committing any major force.

"I want recon squads two through four to start sweeping the western sector of Springtown for hostiles." Gotts said in his radio. "Be prepared to move the Command Center to point Alpha Nine Two."

Gotts then leaned back in his seat and thought for a second. He glanced at the grainy picture of the two Marines and grinned.

"Rescind my previous order to shoot to kill. I want them alive. Preferably the girl."

**Desert**

"Well I hope you're happy." Daniel sighed as he took another sip of water from his rapidly depleting canteen. "We're stuck in the middle of the desert with no ride and almost no supplies because you couldn't control your need for revenge."

"Frankly, I think it was worth it." Alicia replied.

Daniel shook his head. He just wasn't sure why Alicia was taking this so seriously. It was to the point that she was ignoring her usual professionalism. He was fairly sure there was more to her uncharacteristic behavior than she was telling her, but he was not sure what.

"Either way, we're going to have to find a way to link up with the convoy again."

"And you're supposed to be the optimistic one." Alicia cracked a weak smile.

"Yeah, well, even I have my limits." Daniel said as he reached the crest of the hundredth sand dune. It was already getting dark, and the temperature was dropping rapidly to the record lows that were common during the cold desert nights.

"You know," Daniel panted as he trudged through the cold sand, "you keep talking about and hinting at this nasty past of yours, like you want to tell me about it, but you never do."

"Do you really want to hear it?" Alicia sighed. "On one condition, then."

"What?" Daniel asked, already vaguely suspecting what she was going to ask.

"What are you _really_ here for?" Alicia glared at Daniel. "You may have Welkins and the others fooled, but you're hiding something too."

Both Marines stopped and stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, as if they were daring the other to make the first move. Suddenly, Daniel realized how stupid this pointless standoff was. At this rate, they'd both freeze to death. Besides, he was planning to tell Alicia about it at some point.

"Fine, I'll go first." Daniel sighed. "I'm actually a representative from a private law firm."

"You mean you're not even a Marine?" Alicia gasped.

"I'm still a Marine!" Daniel said defensively. Even if they weren't officially part of the armed forces anymore, almost every Marine veteran staunchly maintained that they were Marines forever. "I just never got the chance at active duty."

"Really?" Alicia put her hands on her hips, not quite convinced. "For what?"

"On the account of falling out of a Pelican that was about ten meters in the air."

"Well, that doesn't seem so bad-"

"And then having that same Pelican fall on top of me." Daniel's ribs ached as he recalled that terrible memory.

"Oh…. Oh god." Alicia gasped. "That's terrible."

"And has nothing to do with what we're supposed to be discussing." Daniel pointed out. "Anyways, the part where I told you I'm looking for a certain Marine is very much true. Have you ever heard of Jennifer Vail?"

"No." Alicia shook her head. "What's so important about her anyway?"

"She's about to inherit and ungodly amount of money and everybody is looking to find her."

"Huh, so that's it, huh?" Alicia said, not surprised at all.

Daniel, however, was surprised at the depth of depression and despair that permeated Alicia's tone and mood. "Bad memory?"

"Have you ever gotten that feeling where you're totally powerless, have no control over your life, and that you're always being constantly used by others?" Alicia asked.

"Well-"

"That was rhetorical, don't even bother answering." Alicia said. "I was born on Centran VI, an Outer Colony that quite frankly, the UNSC didn't give two shits about. Of course, it had its share of separatists and rebels, but what Outer Colony doesn't? Just happens to be coincidence that my family, and by extension me, were part of it too."

Daniel was quite sure he knew where this story was headed. After the true scale of the Human/Covenant war dawned upon Humanity, many anti-UNSC separatists realized that it was in their best interests to cooperate with the UNSC. Terrorist attacks and crime reached record lows after news of Covenant encroachment and extermination spread as countless people flocked (or were forced) to UNSC recruiting stations.

"They put a lot of ideas into my head. No more having somebody boss us around, standing up for the little guy, sticking to your beliefs." Alicia laughed bitterly. "And yet, when it comes right down to it, none of its true. None of it at all."

"I think you might be going a bit too far." Daniel was taken off guard by Alicia's sudden candidness.

"Really?" Alicia continued, her voice starting to waver. "Where was that desire for independence and freedom, that need to break from oppressive authority when times got tough? In the end, they'll discard all their all-so-precious principles, just like a fifteen year old girl, standing on the steps of a UNSC recruiting station just wondering _what the hell_ she did wrong!"

At this point, Alicia had completely broken down, collapsing to her knees in the sand, fighting back tears. Daniel bent down to help her back up, only to find himself locked into a tight embrace by Alicia.

"I… I don't want to be alone anymore." Alicia sniffed. "I don't want to lose another friend. You won't leave… will you?"

"Never." Daniel said, shocked at how long Alicia must have kept everything she had just said bottled up inside herself.

"You know… I suddenly feel a lot better." Alicia blinked, wiping a tear from her eye. "Not being able to vent this any of this for five years…"

"That's great." Daniel coughed. "Now can you please let me breathe now?"

"What?" Alicia seemed to just realize that she was hugging Daniel. She quickly broke it and got back up to her feet, her face reddening. "Sorry."

"I suppose this should be something we keep to ourselves." Daniel said, a little bit embarrassed at the whole awkward situation himself.

"I think that would be a good idea." Alicia agreed.

Daniel suddenly had a newfound understanding of Alicia and her personality. She was dealing with serious abandonment issues, and a sense of powerlessness. It would explain why she identified so strongly with the orphans, and why she suffered from uncontrollable rage and indignation at the mercenaries' abuse of power. He realized that despite being such a professional and dangerous Marine, Alicia was a troubled girl, scared of loss and the abyss of loneliness she was trapped in.

"Anyways," Alicia held out her hand, "I'm Alicia Melchior. I'm twenty two years old. My favorite things are cats and Warthogs, and I absolutely _hate_ guys who think nailing Elites is the best way to hit on me."

"I'm Daniel Avers." Daniel smiled and took Alicia's hand. "I'm twenty three years old. My favorite things are cheesy action movies, corny crime dramas, and good alcohol. I also have a recently acquired and rather acute fear of flying."

"Nice to meet you." Alicia smiled, a genuine one this time. "I'm really cold now, so maybe we should get moving again."

Both Marines trudged through the freezing desert for several more minutes. Neither of them spoke to each other for quite a while, until Alicia finally spoke up.

"So, is it true?"

"What? My mission here? Why would I be lying about that?" Daniel asked, slightly confused.

"No, the part with the Pelican falling on you. It sounds pretty painful." Alicia winced.

"Since when did talking about our most painful and traumatizing experiences in our lives become a bonding moment?" Daniel raised an eyebrow, perplexed.

"I'm honestly not sure how we segued into this." Alicia shrugged.

"Yeah, well- holy shit." Daniel stopped and gasped as he reached the top of the sand dune they were on.

"What the…" Alicia gaped.

There, past the sand dune, Daniel and Alicia were standing before what looked to be a desert villa. It was a small, but elegant compound that looked to be some rich guy's private summer home, the type that was inhabited by a guy with far too much money for his own good. Daniel knew that his law firm had stewardship over the deeds of over thirty different homes, all belonging to Bellarius, all costing billions, and most he barely visited more than once every few years.

"What in the world is a place like this doing out here? In the middle of a desert?" Alicia wondered.

"Right now, I don't care." Daniel grinned. "Right now, the place is lit, which means it's probably got its own power and water supply."

"And its own communication system, or even transportation!" Alicia's eyes widened.

"Ha, you really haven't had much of a chance to enjoy the small pleasures of life, have you?" Daniel grinned.

"What are you talking about?" Alicia tilted her head, perplexed.

"From what it looks like, the guy who owns this house doesn't live here year round, and I'd bet that the housekeeping staff, if there was any at all, left in a huge hurry once the Covenant came." Daniel explained. "In such cases, they usually leave behind all sorts of things, _especially_ the luxury stuff."

"Are you implying," Alicia raised an eyebrow, "that we take advantage of somebody else's property?"

"As if we haven't been doing that already?"

"True." Alicia conceded. "You know, for a lawyer, you seem to be pretty lax about laws and stuff."

"I only interpret laws, I don't exactly enforce them." Daniel shrugged. "Besides, do you _really_ want to be stuck out here in below freezing temperatures?"

"Hell no."

By the time they reached the mansion, it was already well into the night and the temperature had reached rock bottom. Daniel's armor systems whined as the temperature fell below the acceptable limit for human exposure. While his armor was designed to provide protection against the elements, it wasn't designed for the extreme cold. Also, since they had no survival gear packed with them, braving the harsh desert night didn't seem like a good idea.

"Doesn't look too high." Alicia said as she inspected the wall that surrounded the compound. "If I get a boost, I'm pretty sure I can get over that wall."

"Ready when you are." Daniel boosted Alicia up several more feet, thankful that she wasn't carrying a full ODST combat load. Alicia just managed to reach the top and climb up the wall. She then reached down and pulled Daniel up.

"Looks safe." Alicia said, inspecting the ground. "Doesn't look like there are any dogs around, which is good, since I fucking hate those things."

With that, Alicia leapt off the wall and landed on the sand below. However, there was an odd metallic ring, an uncharacteristically odd sound for sand. Alicia paused for a moment in confusion, which proved to be a huge mistake. The thin metal pool cover, buried under a thin layer of sand due to an unknown period of neglect, buckled under Alicia's weight and collapsed, sending Alicia tumbling into the ice cold water below. Alicia only had enough time to give a brief shriek before it was cut off by her sudden drop into the water.

"Damnit!" Daniel cursed and leapt off the wall, making sure not to repeat Alicia's mistake and land in the pool. Because his vision was impaired in the low light, he instead homed in on the splashing and cursing Alicia was making. He slid to a stop and lay down on his belly so that he wouldn't accidentally be pulled into the pool himself. He then reached out with his arm, grabbed Alicia, and tugged her to the edge of the pool where he helped her climb out. The moment his hand touched hers, Daniel could feel Alicia shivering uncontrollably. Her soaked clothes and the below freezing temperatures was a deadly combination just asking for a nasty bout of hypothermia. Daniel held Alicia close in an attempt to keep her somewhat warm and rushed to the villa. He promptly kicked the door in and rushed inside.

"W-w-where are we going?" Alicia said, barely able to speak through her chattering teeth.

"We have to get you warm." Daniel replied, helping Alicia up the stairs.

Alicia weakly nodded and didn't say anything, probably because she was feeling so miserable.

Daniel searched the rooms on the second floor until he found what he was looking for: a bedroom with a connected bathroom. He pulled the blanket off of the bed and draped it around Alicia and ran to the bathroom. From what he remembered from his survival training, the only way to counter hypothermia was to raise the victim's body temperature, but the trick was doing it slowly. He dashed to the tub and began filling it with lukewarm water. As the tub filled, he went to check on Alicia, who was still shivering and looking deathly pale.

"How do you feel?" Daniel asked.

"D-do you r-r-really have to f-f-fucking ask?" Alicia smacked Daniel on the side of the head for asking such an obvious question.

"Alright, come on." Daniel guided Alicia into the bathroom and helped her into the tub, which was now almost nearly full.

"Why do you look so embarrassed?" Daniel asked, noting that color was starting to slowly return to Alicia's face. "You were already practically soaking wet when we came in here."

Alicia hit Daniel on the side of the head again. "Way to miss the point."

"Uh, okay…" Daniel said, somewhat perplexed. "We should probably get those wet clothes off now…"

"You really do _love_ taking punishment in threes, do you?" Alicia sighed and shook her head.

"Crap, I'm so sorry." Daniel flushed, embarrassed when he finally realized what he had just said.

"How about this," Alicia sighed, "I'll take care of the clothes thing and you can go check out the rest of the house."

"Good idea." Daniel got up and was about to leave the room when Alicia spoke again.

"Oh, and Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"If I even so much as _suspect_ you peeping," Alicia fixed Daniel with a murderous glare, "I won't just kill you, I will _execute _you."

The chilling conviction in which Alicia said the word "execute" implied to Daniel that it was most likely a fate worse than death. He decided to follow Alicia's advice and check out the house. As he explored the house, he noticed that it was indeed still powered. He turned on several lights and activated the climate control system to counter the harsh desert cold. As he explored the mansion, he noticed that it was indeed abandoned. He was doubtful that there were even any people here in the previous weeks either. All he could see were a number of automated housekeeper drones that shuttled around the mansion performing their preprogrammed tasks. There didn't seem to be any overt security measures either. The mansion probably relied on the remote location and its isolation as its primary form of security. At most, Daniel guessed that there was some sort of silent alarm system to alert he owner. However, Daniel seriously doubted that there was anybody left behind to listen, or anybody brave enough to come down here just to check out a burglar alarm.

There was a distinct lack of perishable foods stored in the house, which was understandable, since this was in all likelihood a vacation home which wasn't inhabited most of the year. However, he did find a large store of non-perishable foods in a small storeroom behind the kitchen, which was better than nothing. Daniel was slightly disappointed, but decided that he couldn't get everything. He then inspected the minibar and grinned like he was a six year old on Christmas. There, sitting in a neat, organized row, was a shelf full of expensive and high grade liquor, a mainstay of any high-end retreat. After cherrypicking the best of the lot, Daniel decided to go back upstairs when the thought occurred to him that Alicia would need a temporary change of clothes. He then searched the closets and dressers he came across, but failed to find anything suitable. Again, since the house wasn't normally inhabited, there wasn't much point in keeping around a large wardrobe. However, Daniel did finally manage to find something that looked like it would fit Alicia. When he took one look at it though, he could only grin stupidly with adolescent glee. It was one of those rare outfits that was wholesomely conservative, yet had that small tinge of naughty perverseness that permeated the minds almost every man that had grown past puberty. Still grinning stupidly, Daniel quickly gathered up his spoils and returned upstairs.

"There is _no way_ I am wearing that." Alicia's normally dull brown eyes flared with the intensity of a thousand suns.

Alicia had removed her uniform and was covered with a combination of towels and blankets. Her brown hair, which was normally tied into double ponytails, now hung freely, but was matted and ragged as it was still not quite dry. However, she still possessed all of her trademark volatility, but Daniel could not help but laugh at her predicament.

"Well, it's either this, or you can just walk around the house for the rest of the night naked." Daniel shrugged.

"Goddamnit." Alicia pouted as she snatched the maid uniform from Daniel's hands. "If you tell anybody about this-"

"My lips are sealed."

Daniel gave Alicia several minutes to change when she finally stepped out into the hall.

"Well," Alicia said, clearly not enjoying the experience, "how do I look?"

"You look astonishingly formal." Daniel smiled, discreetly capturing the image with his battlerecorder. "Not many girls can pull that off."

"You really think so?" Alicia blushed. Her expression then hardened when she asked, "You don't happen to be recording any of this, are you?"

"Of course not!" Daniel laughed weakly.

"Uh huh..." Alicia wasn't quite convinced, but didn't seem overly bothered.

"Oh yeah." Daniel nodded and then pulled out his alcoholic treasure. "This is probably a gross assumption, but I have a feeling that you've never had a chance to taste some decent alcohol in your life."

"Just the cheap stuff we could get from the bar." Alicia shrugged, still annoyed at her maid outfit.

"Well…" Daniel pulled out a bottle of high grade vodka. "I guess now's a good time to start."

"Isn't this against regulation?" Alicia asked suspiciously.

"Oh come on, what're they going to do? Come down here and arrest us?"

"I suspect you have a serious weakness when it comes to alcohol." Alicia shook her head.

"There are worse things to be obsessed over." Daniel poured a glass and toasted Alicia.

"What are we drinking to?" Alicia asked, taking her own glass.

"Huh, that's a good question." Daniel thought for a second. "To just being alive?"

"Works for me." Alicia agreed as she downed her glass.


	6. Castle Siege

"_For seven terrible years the siege regiments of the UN carried out their onerous duty, manning the hundreds of miles of trenches and fortified positions that served to contain the separatist forces. Success was measured in yards of ground gained, and every inch of that deadly ground was bought with the blood and lives of men."_

_-Excerpt from the official history of the Inner Colony War_

Chapter 6: Castle Siege

**Desert Villa**

"Wake up, sleepy head." Alicia said as she prodded Daniel's sleeping form.

"Ugh, is it morning already?" Daniel groggily opened his eyes. "I could've sworn I'd have more time to sleep."

"You were asleep for seven hours." Alicia sighed.

"Well it feels like just two."

"You should've stopped drinking when I asked you to." Alicia shook her head.

"Yeah… but it was worth it." Daniel said as he picked up a nearby liquor bottle, inspected it, and tossed it aside when he found it was empty.

"Come on." Alicia tossed Daniel his clothes. "We've got less than a day before the convoy leaves us behind."

"Right, right." Daniel yawned. "So, I see you're in still in your maid getup. Should I like, tip you or something for waking me up?"

"Ha ha, very funny." Alicia growled. "How about you go check the perimeter while I get changed?"

"What, no breakfast?" Daniel grinned stupidly and managed to catch the thrown ration bar before it could hit him in the face.

"I know that you are trying to milk this stupid situation for all that its worth." Alicia glared at Daniel. "But even I have my limits, _so don't push them._"

Daniel decided that it would be a good idea to drop the jokes for the moment. Chewing on the ration bar, Daniel went down to check the vehicle garage. As he neared what he assumed was the garage, he saw that the door was protected. It was securely locked by an electronic keypad. Daniel stood there for a few moments trying to decide what to do before he decided to just kick the door in. In all of the robbery cases he had seen, Daniel knew that the biggest fallacy in home security was that just because a door had a strong lock didn't mean that the _door itself_ couldn't be overcome. The door quickly splintered and cracked around the lock. Daniel then stepped inside to inspect the garage and grinned. Inside was a fully functional and powered sport utility vehicle, customized to handle the desert terrain. Daniel made his way back up the stairs, and wryly reminded himself to knock first before entering the bedroom.

"Yes, it's safe to come in." Alicia responded.

Daniel opened the door and immediately observed that Alicia was back in her Marine uniform. She had also tied her hair back into the twin ponytails and was busy tying a red kerchief through her hair, which did wonders to adding some visual flair.

"That's a nice kerchief you have there." Daniel noted. "Where'd you get it?"

"It was a present, from my first CO." Alicia smiled sadly. "The first and only one he ever gave to me."

"What, was he a boyfriend or something?" Daniel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Ew, no way!" Alicia flinched in disgust. "He was like, twice my age! He was more of a father figure."

"Ah." Daniel nodded and began cramming several items into his pack in preparation for the trip.

"Why… why are you packing _that_?" Alicia asked curiously, referring to the maid outfit she had just discarded.

"Oh, for the memories." Daniel gave a mocking, malicious grin. "And to ensure that you'll never forget about it."

"_I hate you_."

**Springtown**

Like a wraith, Jerrid stalked through the remains of Springtown, his reptilian eyes scanning the abandoned surroundings like a snake searching for prey. He quietly made his way through the wreckage, alone. It was against orders to travel through the town alone, but Jerrid personally didn't give two shits about Welkins and his toy soldiers. He stalked into what looked like and bank and decided to investigate. He didn't immediately find anything of value, but that was unsurprising, since the most obvious valuables would have been taken first. He moved farther back and noticed that the bank vault was open. He noted that the lock had been blown out by a thermite charge, probably by the mercenaries that he was warned about. Slipping inside, he smiled when he realized that there were still valuables inside. Apparently, whoever broke into the vault didn't or couldn't take everything with them. There were still sacks of coins and paper money littering the floor, and a good portion of the safety deposit boxes were still untouched. Using some tricks he had learned in prison, Jerrid cracked open the untouched boxes and start grabbing whatever he could: jewels, precious metals, bonds, stocks, and anything else that had some sort of perceived monetary value. He didn't even bother with the bills and coins due to their sheer weight and relative worthlessness.

"You shouldn't be doing that."

Jerrid didn't even flinch or stop. He already knew that Neil had been following him, and he simply didn't care. What could a dumb janitor like him do anyway?

"And what are you going to do, try and stop me?" Jerrid gave that sly grin that could turn any man's heart to ice. "Don't you have some floors to mop?"

Neil merely shook his head and stepped out of the vault. No resistance, as expected. Jerrid smiled and continued with his work.

**Desert Villa**

"We got everything, right?" Alicia said as she started the SUV's engine.

"Well, let's see…" Daniel turned to glance at the trunk. "Food, water, food, water, food, water, and some more water. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we got everything."

"You know, I always wanted to drive something with some decent air conditioning for once." Alicia smiled as she hit the accelerator. The SUV barreled out of the garage it was stored in and made its way for the front gate. Fortunately, the pressure sensor under the driveway was still functional, and the gate slowly slid open to accommodate the SUV. However, something else quickly arrived to block the opening.

"What the hell-?" Daniel wondered.

"Shit!" Alicia slammed the brakes, but the SUV lost traction in the loose sand and continued the slide. The vehicle inadvertently rammed the side of the black Warthog that had suddenly materialized, causing both vehicles to shudder violently. Daniel's eyes widened when he realized that the logo on the Warthog was a terrifying silver serpent.

"Not good!" Daniel yelled as bullets started flying and ricocheting off the front of the SUV.

"Obviously!" Alicia quickly shifted the SUV into reverse and slammed down on the gas pedal. The SUV wheeled back while Daniel leaned out the window and fired several bursts at the Serpents. The gate then automatically closed shut, locking the Serpents out.

Alarmed, one of the Serpents quickly grabbed his radio to inform Gotts about the situation.

**Springtown**

Jerrid made his way back to where the convoy was parked, his pockets full and jingling with his pilfered loot. However, as soon as he reached the staging area, he found Welkins and a pair of Guardsmen waiting for him.

"Something wrong, _sir_?" Jerrid asked with a sort of contemptuous sneer.

"Empty your pockets, trooper." Welkins ordered, his finger hovering over the trigger on his rifle.

"What makes you think I have to listen to you?" Jerrid asked rather rudely.

"By taking up a weapon, you've agreed to be subject to the rules and regulations of a UNSC armed force." Welkins glared at Jerrid. "_Now empty your pockets._"

Scowling, Jerrid reluctantly complied with Welkins' order and began emptying his pockets. It wasn't long until he was forced to reveal all of the jewels, bonds, and other valuables he had taken from the bank vault. The items were promptly confiscated by Welkins' escorts.

"I'm pretty sure that you didn't come out of that Covenant prison camp with those." Welkins said calmly. "Where did you get these?"

"I just found them lying around, that's all." Jerrid shrugged.

"Not according to the information I received." Welkins narrowed his eyes. "Under the Geneva Conventions, looting is considered a war crime. I could legally have you shot on the spot, trooper."

"You can try." Jerrid muttered under his breath.

"If we weren't in the situation we are now, you'd be in the nearest military prison right now." Welkins growled. "Consider yourself lucky."

**Desert Villa**

"It looks like they're hanging back. For the moment." Alicia said as she observed the Serpents from the second floor of the villa. "They're keeping a safe distance. I'm pretty sure they're waiting for reinforcements."

"Should we make a break for it?" Daniel asked.

"No way." Alicia shook her head. "That Warthog's got a LAAG on it. If we tried to run, it'll just tear us apart."

"And if we stay, their reinforcements will just make it harder." Daniel pointed out.

"I know, but our options don't seem very promising." Alicia sighed.

The sudden crackling in their radios caught their attention. Because they only had their short range radios with them, that meant the source was nearby, and because it was on a encrypted UNSC band, it was most likely friendly.

"Mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?" A female voice buzzed. "This is flight officer Claire Jones, callsign Vesper. My Hornet's damaged and I'm losing airspeed and I really _really_ don't want to ditch it in the middle of the desert! Is anybody out there?"

"Vesper, this is Captain Daniel Avers." Daniel responded. "We have a position secure enough for you to land at."

"Can you give me a heading?" Vesper asked.

"Uhh, we're not exactly sure where we are either. Can you home in on the signal?"

"I'll try." Vesper said, exasperated. "Hopefully my ride doesn't explode before I get there."

"Is it me," Alicia blinked, "or do you seem to have the natural quality to just have something come along to save our lives when we need it?"

"What can I say? I must have a magnetic personality." Daniel said jokingly.

It was about twenty more minutes before Daniel and Alicia caught sight of a smoking Hornet rise up over the horizon and struggling its way through the morning sky. The situation looked precarious until finally the small aircraft touched down on the roof of the villa.

"Well thank god you guys were around." Vesper said happily as she jumped out of the cockpit. Like the craft she flew, Vesper was a very small person. She was well below average height, about a full head shorter than Daniel and Alicia. However, she was incredibly energetic, and was already pacing around her Hornet inspecting for damage.

"I'm sorry." Alicia stepped forward. "But how did you get here?"

"Well, that's a funny story…" Vesper's voice trailed off when she realized she didn't know Alicia's name.

"Private Alicia Melchior."

"Alicia." Vesper's head bobbed. "Anyways, I got dropped down here along with the Helljumpers to provide close air support. Turns out, I'm the only Hornet in a couple hundred miles and _everybody_ needs air support, so I'm hopping around from base to base, helping out as much as I can. I was actually on my way to a Guard depot when I ran into a Covvie patrol. They lit my Hornet up and one of them got a lucky shot on my power supply."

Vesper pointed to the rear of the Hornet, where it was scorched black from plasma burns and carbon scoring. Some of the Hornet's protective armor plating had melted away, exposing various wiring and machinery within.

"Shit." Daniel gasped when he saw the damage. "Can you fix that?"

"Of course I can!" Vesper pouted, annoyed at Daniel's lack of confidence in the resilience of her vehicle. "This isn't the first time my Hornet's been shot up! I can get it back up and running in like, half an hour."

"Better make that ten minutes." Alicia said, looking into the distance. "Because we're going to have company really soon."

There, off in the desert horizon was a cloud of smoke. Even though Daniel had a rough idea of what it was, he took out his binoculars to confirm it anyway. A pit formed in his stomach when he confirmed that it was an entire convoy of Serpents consisting of over twenty assorted vehicles.

"What's the problem?" Vesper looked at the convoy. "They don't look like Covvies to me."

"No, but they're not much better." Alicia warned. "They'll shoot you on sight if you get in their way."

"Well shit." Vesper scratched her head. "I might as well have just ditched in the middle of the desert then."

"Just get that Hornet fixed." Daniel ordered. "We're going to need it."

"Don't need to tell me twice, bro." Vesper sighed and whipped out her field repair kit.

**Serpent Mobile Command Post**

"We're here, sir." Gotts' driver announced as the command vehicle ground to a halt.

"A timely arrival as always." Gotts smiled. He briefly considered stepping out of the vehicle, but remembered that one of his targets was armed with a scoped battle rifle. Instead, he activated his radio and set it to broadcast on an open UNSC frequency.

"I know you're in there, Mr. Avers." Gotts said. "It's a beautiful day. How about you just hand over Miss Vail there and save us both a whole mess of trouble?"

**Villa**

"What the hell's he talking about?" Alicia turned to Daniel. "Vail isn't with us!"

"Well, _we_ know that." Daniel pointed out the window. "Apparently they don't."

"Wait a minute," Alicia gasped, "you don't think…"

"Well." Daniel pointed out. "Jennifer Vail _is_ a pretty feminine name…"

"Son of a bitch."

"Whoa, what am I missing?" Vesper's voice crackled over the radio, thankfully on the encrypted band.

"Just focus on fixing your Hornet." Daniel responded. "And stay out of sight! We'll take care of this."

"Well?" Gotts asked impatiently. "What's it going to be?"

"You want my response?" Daniel glanced at Alicia.

Alicia nodded and aimed her battle rifle. A single burst was all that was needed to punch through the driver side window of the command vehicle parked outside and instantly kill the driver.

"You just made a big mistake." Gotts said angrily.

"I could say the same to you." Daniel replied sharply.

Suddenly, there was a rumbling sound outside. Daniel and Alicia looked outside to see several vehicles in the Serpent convoy mobilizing. Nearly a dozen dark armored figures piled out of transports and began making their way to the front gates of the compound. Emboldened by the lack of fire coming their way, the Serpent squad took positions in front of the gate and began planting charges on it. However, Daniel and Alicia had not been spending all this time sitting inside the villa twiddling their thumbs. They had spent their time fortifying and booby trapping the mansion, turning it into a veritable fortress. Though it wouldn't stop a large determined force like the Serpents, it would definitely slow them down, hopefully long enough for Vesper to get her Hornet fixed.

Unknown to the Serpents, Daniel and Alicia had planted several antipersonnel mines underneath the sand. Alicia pressed the detonation trigger and watched as the mines exploded in a ragged sequence, sending the hapless Serpents flying in all directions. Eight of the Serpents lay in the sand either wounded or dead while the rest panicked and retreated back the relative safety of their convoy. The detonation of the mines was quickly answered by a fusillade of gun and cannon fire from the assembled convoy outside, shredding the exterior of the mansion and forcing Daniel and Alicia to take cover.

"Holy crap!" Vesper cried. "What the hell is going on?!"

"We've got a _lot _of hostiles!" Daniel replied. "How much longer!"

"Twenty minutes, assuming I don't get shot!" Vesper grumbled.

"Uh oh." Alicia said as she glanced out of the shattered window. "It looks like they're mad."

Outside, the Serpents had taken advantage of the cover fire to drag away their wounded and dead from the gate. Outside, a Viper Infantry Fighting Vehicle was positioned in front of the gate and revving its engines.

"Alicia, I think it's time to get the surprise ready." Daniel said, dashing for the stairs.

"Good idea." Alicia quickly followed suit.

Though designed to be tough, the iron security gate was not designed to withstand a head on collision from a twenty ton armored vehicle. The moment the Viper slammed into the gate, the structure crumpled like paper, paving the way for the Serpents to finally enter the compound. However, no sooner had the Viper breached the gate when the SUV came barreling out of the garage. The Viper's 40mm cannon barked as it fired explosive shells at the oncoming vehicle, but the SUV kept coming. Had there been a driver, he would have been instantly killed, but the only things that kept the SUV going was a broom handle propped against the accelerator. The moment the front end of the SUV impacted the Viper, the belt of C7 charges nestled in the engine compartment detonated, shattering the relatively fragile SUV to pieces and melting the front half of the Viper, bringing the IFV to a screeching halt. The driver quickly panicked and popped the hatch in an attempt to escape and was promptly rewarded for his efforts with a three round burst to the chest. The driver's limp body slid back down the hatch. Daniel, pumped up on adrenaline, sprinted to the Viper and lobbed two grenades into the open hatch and dashed back to the relative safety of the villa. The grenades detonated with a muffled _whump_ and the Viper began to catch fire.

"Well that was lucky." Daniel panted as he kneeled next to Alicia. "How many do you think they'll send next?"

"Everybody, I assume." Alicia reached for her lighter. "Hope they like the refreshments."

"Ha, I like your style." Daniel laughed as Alicia went off to prepare the next set of booby traps. Meanwhile, the Serpents had regrouped and were beginning their next attempt to penetrate the compound. Fortunately for the Marines, the burning Viper was now blocking the majority of the gate opening, with only enough space for one or two people to squeeze through at a time. Daniel kept peppering the Serpents with his assault rifle. He managed to keep them back for about seven minutes, but eventually Daniel ran low on ammunition and was forced to cut down on his volume of fire, allowing Serpents to slip in and start setting up a base of fire to suppress him. With the gate compromised, Daniel withdrew from the garage and deeper into the house.

Meanwhile, outside, the Serpents began pouring in now that their advance was unopposed. In total, an entire platoon of almost forty men surrounded the mansion and prepared to breach. They focused on three main points of entry: the garage, the front door, and the patio windows. However, they quickly ran into complications. The patio group attempted to smash the seemingly harmless glass and quickly regretted it when the flash glass performed its namesake, blinding the Serpents and putting them out of the fight. The group breaching the front door set off a tripwire that detonated a small shaped C7 charge which turned the door into a giant frag grenade. The Serpents were shredded by a storm of wooden splinters and steel shrapnel, stalling their advance. Finally, the garage group kicked the door in, only to have a bundle of lit Molotov cocktails fall on their heads. The Serpents shrieked as the flaming alcohol splashed all over their bodies and caused panic and confusion among them.

"Idiots." Gotts seethed. "What the hell are they doing?"

As the Serpents struggled to enter the mansion, Daniel and Alicia had retreated to the second floor and were keeping watch on the staircase leading up. Because they were both low on ammunition, they instead had a pile of improvised weaponry at their disposal. As the Serpents finally started to make their way in and up the stairs, Daniel and Alicia stood behind the massive wooden dresser they had positioned at the top of the stairs and gave it a hearty push. The heavy wooden piece of furniture rolled down the stairs and knocked the oncoming Serpents down like a row of dominoes. They then threw several more Molotov cocktails down the stairs, driving off the Serpents for another precious minute.

"This is an odd way to defend a house." Alicia remarked.

"I got the idea from an old movie." Daniel grinned. "Never thought it'd actually work."

"It's ready!" Vesper yelled through the radio. "She's alive and breathing!"

"I think that's our cue." Alicia said.

"You go first." Daniel said, reaching for the last improvised weapon. "I'll keep them busy."

With that, Daniel threw his last grenade down the stairs. However, this one was duct-taped to a fusion core to give it some extra stopping power. The resulting explosion caused the entire villa to rumble and Daniel believed it was a good time to retreat and made his way to the roof.

"What do you mean you can't find them?" Gotts yelled.

"I'm sorry, sir!" One of the Serpents inside the mansion replied. "We've cleared both the first and second floors, and there's no sign of them!"

Before he could chastise his men any further, Gotts was interrupted by the whine of aircraft engines. Gotts finally stepped out of the mobile command center to see a Hornet lifting off from the roof of the mansion. He growled, frustrated at the fact that they had a Hornet this entire time.

"All units! Shoot that Hornet down!" Gotts yelled.

Gotts still had a number of Vipers and Warthogs at his command, and their cannons and LAAGs were more than enough to take down a small craft like the Hornet. He would bag this bounty. He would make sure of it.

"Uhhh, I hope you're good with this thing." Daniel said as he looked at the number of weapon barrels pointing up at them.

"Ha, you guys are lucky that I'm the one in the cockpit." Vesper boasted. "I can make this baby dance in ways you can't imagine."

"I'm not liking the sound of this." Daniel felt nauseous. Part of it was his discomfort with flying, and the rest was due to being incredibly exposed while hanging off the side of the Hornet. If his safety harness didn't catastrophically fail, he was most likely going to get shot.

"Hold onto your panties, bro!" Vesper yelled enthusiastically. "This is the best part!"

The Hornet then took a sudden nosedive toward the ground, throwing off the aim of the weapons trained on it. While the gunners were still thrown off, Vesper boosted at full speed, with the Hornet barely feet off the ground and kicking up a massive dust cloud. She also kept rapidly jinking and juking to shake off enemy fire as Daniel and Alicia hung on for dear life.

"_How are we still alive?!_" Alicia yelled.

"Because I live for this stuff!" Vesper laughed as she dumped more power into the engines.

True to its name, the Hornet proved to be too small and quick to be hit by enemy fire. Within seconds, the craft crested a nearby sand dune and used it to shield it the rest of the way until it was comfortably out of range of the cannon fire whizzing past.

"Can we please slow down?" Daniel felt dizzy as he saw the ground whizzing by so quickly. "I think I'm going to barf."

"Oh fine, ruin my good mood." Vesper pouted and eased up on the throttle, bringing the Hornet's speed down from suicidal to slightly dangerous. "Where are we headed to?"

"Go south." Alicia said. "There's a town not far from here where we can link up with friendlies."

"That's the best thing I've heard all day." Vesper said happily.

**Springtown**

Welkins frowned when he checked his watch. The forty eight hour deadline was almost up and there was still no sign of Daniel or Alicia. While he was confident that both Marines were fine and absolutely certain they would be able to take care of themselves, the prospect of just leaving them behind was not one he looked forward to.

"Sir," Talls arrived to give the latest status report on the convoy, "the last foraging party has just returned."

"Alright." Welkins stood up reluctantly. He wanted to stay longer, but he couldn't afford to risk the safety of the convoy by staying in one location too long. "Get ready to-"

"Sir!" One of the civilians yelled, pointing to the sky. "Look!"

Curious, Welkins looked to where the civilian was pointing and saw a dot in the sky. He was about to order to the Warthog LAAGs to fire on it when he recognized the unmistakable silhouette of a Hornet against the blue desert sky.

"Hold fire!" Welkins yelled through the radio, in case any of the gunners decided to get trigger happy. "That's a friendly up there!"

"What's a Hornet doing all the way out here?" Talls wondered.

"That's what I'm about to find out." Welkins keyed his radio to an open channel. "Unidentified aircraft, hold your position and identify yourself, or we will fire on you."

"It's broadcasting a UNSC IFF code." Leeman, Welkins' radio operator, announced. "I'm bringing it on the line now."

"I hope you saved us a seat at the table, Sergeant." Daniel's voice responded.

"Of course I have." Welkins laughed. "Looks like I have to make room for another one, too."

"Flight Officer Claire Jones, callsign Vesper, at your service." Vesper said happily.

Meanwhile, near the rear of the convoy, Neil was busy loading water jugs into the back of a newly commandeered cargo truck. As he reached for the next jug, he saw Jerrid standing there, glaring at him.

Trying not to look startled, Neil stood up and face Jerrid. "Looking for something?"

"Nothing really." Jerrid said, staring at Neil with those damned eyes. "I was just passing, that's all."

Neil waited for several seconds after Jerrid stalked off until he was sure the man was completely gone. It was only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

**Desert Villa**

"What are the losses?" Gotts asked, already certain he wasn't going to like the answer.

"A total of forty casualties." Wilson looked at the tally. "Thirteen dead, twenty seven wounded. The Viper we used to breach the gate took some pretty heavy damage. It's still operational, but it won't be combat ready until it gets taken back to base for an overhaul."

"What's the ETA on the competition?" Gotts said, referring to the independent hunters that most likely were hired to do the same job he was on.

"Probably a day or two." Wilson said. "If they're coming, there's really only one place they can land safely without drawing UNSC scrutiny."

"Home base." Gotts grinned. "Pack it up. We're going to go pick up some reinforcements."


	7. All Your Base

"_Our enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle hardened. They believe that the gods are on their side. Let them believe what they want. We have tanks on ours!"  
__-Colonel Arnold Jennings of the 83__rd__ Armored Division_

Chapter 7: All Your Base

**Kaldic Flats**

"We should almost be there." Welkins said, glancing at the map. "We can't be more than one or two hours away from the depot now."

"That's great." Daniel smiled. "Maybe we can get some decent supplies now."

"And maybe a shower." Vesper said, glowering enviously at Alicia.

"Hold up." Welkins said, slowly bringing his Warthog to a stop. "Talls says that one of the vehicles is having engine problems."

"Well, it should be about time for our scheduled road stop anyway." Daniel glanced at his watch. "Relay to the rest of the convoy that we're on a fifteen minute break."

"Sure thing." Welkins nodded.

"Hey, what are those?" Alicia asked, pointing to a flock of birds milling about on the sand dunes in the distance.

"Oh, those?" Welkins shrugged. "Those are desert gulls. They feed on pretty much anything they can find, and have a knack for finding water, even if it's underground."

"Ever eaten one?"

"Oh yeah, they're pretty common game animals." Welkins grinned, catching on to Alicia's intent. "I'll be sure to inform to the rest of the convoy so they don't start panicking when they hear gunfire."

"I'll be back in a few." Alicia leapt off the Warthog and turned around. "Come on, Captain, aren't you coming along?"

"Uh, sure." Daniel followed Alicia off towards the distant flock of birds.

"Hey, and make sure you come back on time!" Welkins yelled.

"Don't they make such a cute couple?" Vesper grinned.

"I can't say I didn't see it coming." Welkins shrugged. "By the way, how's your Hornet?"

"Well, it hasn't fallen out of the truck, which is a blessing in itself." Vesper sighed. The convoy didn't have any vehicles properly suited to carry the aircraft, so they instead took the largest truck they could find and haphazardly tied the Hornet down to the bed of the vehicle. Also, in order to reduce the weight, that had taken out all of the craft's ammunition, which actually wasn't much. There were only two missiles and a handful of cannon rounds left to feed the Hornet's armaments, which was a rather paltry collection.

"So what exactly got you into Hornet flying anyways?" Welkins asked.

"Why are you asking?"

"Because I'm bored and I can't think of anything else to talk about."

"Point." Vesper laughed. "The moment I first saw my first Hornet, I just fell in love with it. All my life I've been constantly getting ragged on for my height and here I come across a vehicle where being small and deadly is its entire purpose."

"I can see the allure." Welkins looked at the sleek, though battle damaged craft. "It would certainly be a nasty surprise to see one of these come around the corner."

Meanwhile, Daniel and Alicia had advanced to the flock of desert gulls, which were now milling about barely a handful of meters away. Not wanting to waste valuable ammunition, Alicia had instead brought a pair of scavenged Covenant beam rifles to do the shooting.

"Right, well, I guess this is a good time as any for you to improve on your _terrible_ marksmanship." Alicia said as she handed Daniel one of the beam rifles. "From what I heard, these birds are pretty stupid and don't really respond to gunfire."

"Not surprising, since there isn't much out here that could eat them." Daniel grumbled. "And what's so bad about my shooting?"

"There _was_ that time you missed a bunch of Jackals at point blank. Don't even think that I forgot about that."

"Okay, you've got a point there." Daniel went prone in the sand and braced the rifle against a small mound of sand and snuggled it into his shoulder. Recalling the weapon drills that were ingrained into his memory, he exhaled slowly and fired. The first shot missed, as it was a bit too high. The gulls were startled and started running around in fright for a few seconds, but immediately settled down a few seconds later, as if they had completely forgotten the fact they had just been shot at.

"Huh, no wonder you can't hit a damn thing." Alicia frowned. "You tense up like a goddamn rubber band when you shoot."

To lead by example, Alicia nestled her rifle against her shoulder. She zeroed in on one particular gull that was milling about on the outskirts of the flock, making it easier to pick out. Once she was satisfied with her target, she slowly exhaled, her body visibly sagging as she did so and pulled the trigger. The beam lanced out and vaporized the gull's head and the small bird's headless body ran around for a few seconds before falling over, still twitching.

"And _that_ is how you shoot." Alicia grinned. "And if you're planning to eat what you shoot, make sure to get a headshot. With an energy weapon like this, you'll just superheat the flesh and literally make the bird explode."

"Huh, that'd be interesting." Daniel mused. Following Alicia's advice, he scoped his target and fought the urge to tense up. His shot wasn't nearly as accurate as Alicia's, but at least he hit the gull. The small bird exploded in a ball of superheated flesh and scorched feathers, signifying a successful hit in the most gory and violent way imaginable. The hunt/training exercise continued and they managed to shoot down a half dozen salvageable gull corpses.

"Ew." Daniel grimaced as he picked up a still twitching gull corpse. "I suppose it beats those stupid ration packs."

"What's the matter, not used to killing what you eat?" Alicia laughed. "These rifles still have some charge left. We might as well keep it up."

"That looks fun. Mind if I try?"

Daniel and Alicia instantly froze when they heard that cold, malicious voice behind them. They turned to see Jerrid standing there, his feline eyes staring right at them. They both had no idea how Jerrid managed to sneak up on them. Daniel tried to hide his surprise and unease, and he noticed Alicia visibly tense.

"Uh, sure." Daniel said, handing Jerrid his beam rifle. It was against all common sense, but Daniel was more afraid of what would happen if he refused.

"Huh, interesting." Jerrid smiled, his unsettling eyes inspecting the Covenant weapon. He then took a firing position and immediately started firing. Though at first it looked as if he were just firing haphazardly, upon closer inspection, Alicia realized that there was much more to Jerrid than she had initially thought. Every shot hit squarely where he wanted to, and not single shot was wasted. Desert gulls exploded left and right and by the time Jerrid was finished, the air reeked of ozone and seared meat.

"Well that was fun." Jerrid grinned and tossed the spent rifle back to Daniel. He then stalked off into the desert, disappearing as mysteriously as he had appeared.

Daniel and Alicia looked at each other nervously. They knew there was something _wrong_ about Jerrid, and this incident only confirmed it. They didn't know what his problem was, or why he was jailed, but they now knew for sure that it definitely wasn't for "tax reasons".

**UNPG Supply Depot #43**

Just over two hours later, it appeared that Welkins' estimate was correct. As the convoy rumbled down the road, most of the passengers noticed a weathered roadsign announcing their arrival to the much anticipated supply dump. However, what they weren't anticipating were the sounds of gunfire and the whine of plasma weaponry.

"Okay, _that_ doesn't sound good." Daniel grimaced.

"Try raising them on the radio." Welkins suggested.

"Good idea." Daniel keyed his radio. "This is Captain Avers, are there any UNSC forces out there? Please respond."

"Captain who?" A fuzzy, panicky voice responded. "This is 43rd UNPG Division! Or what's left of it anyway. Who's out there?!"

"UNSC forces." Daniel said bluntly. "What's your situation?"

"We've got Covvies pressing on us! I don't know if we can hold them off!"

"Right, check your fire." Daniels said. "We're coming in to assist."

"H-how can we tell if you're friendly?" The anonymous officer asked.

"We're the people in the goddamn Warthogs!" Daniel had now lost his patience. The besieged officer was obviously frazzled beyond the point of logical thought.

"Okay, we're going in." Daniels told Welkins. "We'll leave the civilian convoy here and we'll go assist the depot with the armed Warthogs."

"But we've got no idea what's going on over there."

"Doesn't matter." Daniel shook his head. "If we lose the depot, we might as well just lay down in the desert and die."

"Good point." Welkins agreed. "Let's ride."

Seconds later, a quartet of Warthogs roared over the sand dunes, barreling toward the supply depot. Immediately, they could see that the depot was in deep trouble. The facility was under assault by over two hundred assorted Covenant infantry with light armor support. The depot itself was a rather drab, unassuming facility. It was basically a complex of prefabricated ground level structures with an underground bunker entrance which undoubtedly led to the actual depot. The facility itself was penned by a chain link fence, with several bunkers, some trenchworks, and the occasional guard tower for defense. The gun and plasma fire being traded between the defenders and attackers could clearly be seen, and was unclear which side would be victorious.

"Okay, keep an eye out." Welkins cautioned. "The Covvies may not know we're here, but we can't count out friendly fire."

"Yeah, they got mortars." Alicia pointed to the depot complex, where distant _whumping_ and faint smoke trails streaking into the air confirmed her observation.

"Alright, spread it out." Daniel said. "And take out the vehicles first. Those are the priority!"

There was a flurry of acknowledgements from the other Warthog crews. The four light vehicles hit the Covenant attack force in the rear, where it was least expected. While three of the Warthogs had LAAGs, the one Welkins, Daniel, and Alicia were riding in was armed with a gauss cannon, making it ideal for anti-armor attacks. A single shot could demolish a Ghost and a sustained burst could take down a heavily armored Wraith.

Almost immediately, the LAAGs chattered and the gauss cannon whined as they poured fire into the rear of the Covenant formation. Vehicles exploded and infantry were shredded apart in the initial volley. However, it wasn't all good news and sunshine. Small arms fire and mortar shells continued to fire indiscriminately into the combat zone, posing as great a risk to the Marines as the Covenant. To highlight the fact, a mortar shell touched down just several meters in front of Daniel's Warthog, sending a plume of sand into the air that splashed all over the vehicle and its occupants.

"It would be a little helpful if you would ease up on the friendly fire!" Daniel yelled at the depot officer through his radio.

"We're not letting it up until we're absolutely sure the assault can be thrown back." The officer replied bluntly.

With that, Alicia rotated the gauss cannon and punched a trio of gauss bolts straight into the vulnerable rear armor of the lone Wraith tank supporting the Covenant forces. The tank didn't exactly explode, but it crew inside had obviously been killed or incapacitated. The vehicle suddenly slewed the right, knocking a Ghost over and nosediving into the sand. With its remaining momentum, the Wraith tank literally catapulted itself onto its back, crushing an unfortunate squad of Grunts, and lay there like a beached whale.

"Think the threat can be thrown back now?" Daniel asked smugly.

"We'll be checking our fire." The officer said apologetically.

With that, the mortar fire noticeably thinned as the mortar teams held their fire. With a bit more room to maneuver, the Warthogs soon got more aggressive in their attacks, weaving through the Covenant troop formations as they fired. The Covenant, with their formation broken and their numbers quickly dwindling, finally broke and attempted to retreat. However, they were unable to outrun the faster Warthogs and they were quickly run down.

Once the fighting had died down, heads start poking out from the depot's smoldering fortifications. They took one look at the victorious Warthogs and start cheering and firing their weapons wildly into the air.

"They're a pretty cheerful lot, aren't they?" Alicia mused.

"Well, we did just save their asses." Daniel pointed out.

With that, the Warthogs pulled up to the front gate of the compound, where a squad of guardsmen and what appeared to be a lieutenant were waiting for them.

"Captain Daniel Avers, ODST." Daniel introduced himself to the officer.

"Lieutenant Anthony Piett." The officer replied, sharply saluting Daniel. "Ramanian 5th Guard Division. I hope my comms officer didn't give you too much trouble."

"He could've have worked on his manners." Daniel causally returned the salute and asked, "What's your unit's condition?"

"I have about sixty men stationed in the depot." Piett said. "We were stopping by for supplies when the Covvies suddenly ambushed us."

"We should probably call the rest of the convoy." Alicia said, looking at the darkening sky. "It would be pretty nice to spend the night indoors for a change."

"There's more of you?" Piett raised an eyebrow.

"We picked up a few hundred civilian refugees." Welkins explained. "We're heading north to friendly lines and decided to stop here for supplies."

"Well you chose hell of at time to stop by." Piett sighed.

**Two Hours Later**

It didn't take long for the civilian convoy to file into the compound. Because he didn't want to deal with a riot over who could reach the supplies first, Daniel had issued a standing order that only military personnel would be allowed inside the depot. Civilians would be restricted to the aboveground facilities.

"You see, once we lost contact with Central Command, we fell on our emergency orders." Piett explained as he led Daniel, Alicia, and Welkins on a tour of the facility. "We went to ground and started performing hit and run operations on Covenant units and positions. We come back here every few days to restock our food and ammunition."

"What's your fighting strength?" Welkins asked.

"I've got fifty four men and five Viper IFVs." Piett said. It's not much, but it's enough to stand up to most Covenant units we run into."

"Are you aware of any other friendly units in the area?" Daniel asked.

"Well, there are definitely other units out there." Piett said. "Of that we're sure."

"How do you know?" Alicia wondered.

"Standard operating procedure is to fill out the requisition form whenever you take supplies, that way we know what the depot has." Piett pulled out a secure laptop. "And before you ask, no, we can't find out who took the supplies or what they're equipped with. Any data that can identify the unit is encrypted in case the information falls into the hands of the enemy."

"You realize that now the Covenant have found this place, it won't be long before that happens." Daniel pointed out.

"That's why I've ordered my men to start taking everything that's not nailed down and prepping to scuttle the whole facility." Piett said. "With your convoy, we can get much more supplies out."

"Have you tried contacting anybody else?" Alicia asked. "You know, sending out a radio message or beacon?"

"SOP is to maintain radio silence in the event of enemy occupation, in case the enemy is listening in on our transmissions." Piett responded.

"But what will happen when another unit comes by and finds it crawling with Covenant?" Daniel pointed out. "The location is compromised anyway, so why not try to rally as many soldiers as we can?"

"You've got a point there." Piett agreed. "I'll send a coded message out. You people are free to take anything you need. It's not as if we're under any obligation to leave anything behind."

The next few hours were spent hastily inventorying the supplies. It was quickly decided that the main priorities would be food, fuel, and ammunition. There were still massive crates of heavy ordnance, like tank and artillery shells. However, since the convoy and Piett's force lacked any kind of main battle tanks that could use them. As they moved through the depot, they noticed a pair of massive, armored suits trundling by, carrying massive crates of rations in their claws.

"What the hell are those?" Daniel asked, bewildered at the large, clunky suits.

"Cyclops powered suits." Alicia said. "They were all the rage a few decades ago. They could take a lot of punishment and could rip Covenant vehicles apart like paper, but they were eventually phased out and relegated to power lifting. The ones that weren't scrapped were shipped to backwater planets and installations like this. No offense, Sergeant."

"None taken." Welkins said.

"Why'd they do that?" Daniel felt plenty intimidated by the hulking armored suits, and was very sure that they hadn't lost any of their fearsome strength over the years.

"That was pretty much the time that the SPARTANs came around."

"Ah."

"Okay, so we got the necessities covered." Welkins announced. "We've got more than enough to keep the convoy and Piett's men going for weeks."

"Oh damn, I forgot!" Daniel gasped. "Vesper's Hornet needs missiles!"

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it." Alicia said. "You guys should go and get things straightened out with Piett."

**Command Post**

"We've been broadcasting the message for five minutes." Piett said when Daniel and Welkins entered the makeshift command post.

"Did you get any reply?"

"None." Piett shook his head. "You have to admit, whoever's out there, they're pretty disciplined not to openly respond."

"Or maybe there's nobody out there to hear it." Welkins pointed out rather pessimistically.

**Depot**

"Let's see…" Alicia muttered to herself as she strolled through the aisles of munitions and supplies. It had proven harder than she thought to find munitions suitable for a Hornet. There were missile pods for Pelicans, cannon shells for Sparrowhawks, and even barrage packs for Vultures, but no sign of the smaller missiles Hornets typically used.

"Are you lost, Private?" Jerrid's cool, almost feline voice whispered.

Alicia whipped around, her hand instinctively reaching for her holstered M6D. "What the hell are you doing in here?"

"A little edgy, aren't we?" Jerrid gave a predatory smile, his cat-like eyes glinting in the dim light. "Haven't your parents told you not to wander alone in strange places?"

"You're not supposed to be down here." Alicia frowned, trying to hide her unease at having to deal with Jerrid.

"Who's going to stop me? You?" Jerrid's predatory smile reminded Alicia of the Chesire Cat, except it was more bloodthirsty with a taste for human flesh. "I don't see your precious friends around to back you up. I thought you Marines were always so adamant about teamwork…"

"Leave, _now._" Alicia said sternly, flipping the safety on her pistol off.

"My my, if we're going to resort to that, then I just might have to show you why I was _really_ in prison." Jerrid eyes stared into Alicia's for what seemed like an eternity before he casually turned around and started walking away. "Just kidding."

"Is something wrong?" A pair of Piett's guardsmen, who had noticed the commotion, came over to investigate.

"It's nothing." Alicia shook her head, trying to calm herself down. She immediately tried to shift her mind back to the issue at hand. "Do you happen to know where the Hornet missiles are being kept?"

**Two Days Later**

"It's been two days already. We can't afford to stay here any longer if we want to stay ahead of the Covenant." Piett said. "Normally me and my men won't stay here for more than a few hours."

"I agree, I think we've gotten all we could out of this." Welkin agreed.

"Then prep the convoy to leave." Daniel nodded. "Be sure to inform the new arrivals as well."

Over the past two days, the convoy had received a slew of reinforcements and new arrivals responding to Piett's radio message. They slowly trickled in over time, but each new addition was warmly welcomed. The majority were _ad hoc_ units similar to Daniel's convoy, though a bit smaller. In total, they had received over a hundred additional people, all a mix of soldiers and civilians. With them, they brought a variety of vehicles like trucks, vans, RVs, armored transports, and even a trio of Elephant heavy carriers. Due to the breakdown of civil and military order as well as the ragtag nature of most of the groups that had arrived, Daniel quickly found himself to be in charge of over two hundred soldiers and refugees. What a ridiculous thought, a lawyer in charge of what was essentially a small mechanized company! However, for better or worse, every looked up to him as the de facto leader. In order to deal with the duties and stresses of an actual command, he formed a small "command core" consisting of himself, Alicia, Welkins, and Piett. Daniel already knew that Alicia and Welkins were able leaders, despite their relatively low ranks. Piett so far was unproven, but from what he had seen, Daniel was sure Piett was intelligent and level-headed enough to earn his rank.

"Sir, we're getting a radio transmission. UNSC encryption." Talls ran in, nearly out of breath.

"Stragglers?" Welkins mused.

"Patch me in." Daniel said as he activated his radio. "This is Captain Avers, who is this I'm talking to?"

"This is Captain Wrall of the 2nd Armored Battalion! We're in some serious shit right now!"

Daniel didn't like the sense of urgency in Wrall's voice. "What's your situation?"

"We've got Covvies at up the ass! They can't be more than ten, fifteen minutes behind us!"

"Just head toward the beacon and link up with us. We're leaving the depot right now."

"No can do!" Wrall yelled. "We're out of shells for our primary weapon and we're running low on fuel! There's no way we can go any farther than the depot!"

Daniel glanced at Alicia, Welkins, and Piett. "What's the call?"

"Ten minutes? That's cutting it close." Piett said. "I say we pick them up and ditch the tank."

"I don't know," Welkins frowned, "having a tank with our convoy would be a massive asset. All we have to do is load up some shells and take them with us."

"But all of our cargo vehicles are already loaded down with supplies." Piett pointed out, "and most of them have already left the depot."

"I've got an idea." Alicia said. "We can use the Cyclops and load the shells straight onto the tank. We can lash them down if we have to. Plus, fuel won't be a problem because there's still plenty left here."

"That's crazy!" Piett gaped. "Do you understand how unbelievably dangerous that is?"

"I'll stay behind. We only need one person to operate the Cyclops." Alicia reminded them. "And if I need quick extraction, we've got Vesper's Hornet."

"Since when could you operate a Cyclops?" Welkins asked.

"I'm a Pathfinder." Alicia said proudly. "We've pretty much got a universal driver's license, which really helps in our line of work."

"Okay, we'll do it your way then." Daniel agreed.

By the time the convoy had reached the ridge overlooking the depot, Daniel could see a lone Scorpion tank barreling its way toward the facility, kicking up a massive dust cloud. However, it was nothing compared to the ominous wall of dust that was slowly breaking over the horizon, signifying the approach of a massive Covenant attack force. Looking through a pair of binoculars, Daniel could see the Scorpion with the name _Amanda_ stenciled on its side pulling into the compound, ramming down the fence rather than waiting for it to open. Already, Alicia had stacked several crates of tank shells on the compound. She then brought the unwieldy Cyclops she was piloting around, picking up a crate and carrying it to the Scorpion. The tank's crew quickly piled out, assisting the powered suit in lashing the crate to the Scorpion's hull. Another crewman dashed off to grab the prepared fuel hose to refuel the ailing tank. Meanwhile, Daniel caught who he assumed was Captain Wrall breaking open one of the crates and handing shells to another crewmate.

"Captain, we don't have time to reload your tank!" Daniel said sternly.

"I know, but hell if I'm going to be running without something to cover my ass!" Wrall responded.

Suddenly, plasma fire stitched across the Scorpion, forcing the tank crew to duck for cover.

"What's going on?" Daniel yelled.

"Looks like a Covenant advance squad." Vesper said. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

Vesper, who had been on station to provide air cover if needed, swooped down in Hornet, machine guns chattering and missiles screaming as she ripped the small Ghost squadron to shreds. One of the small Covenant vehicles managed to get through, but quickly found itself at the mercy of Alicia's Cyclops. A massive powered fist crumpled the Ghost like paper while the other grabbed the vehicle's pilot. The Elite screamed and struggled, but even its mighty strength couldn't overcome the Cyclops' mechanical power. The fist closed and the Elite was immediately crushed into a ruined ball of flesh and armor.

"You've got less than a minute now!" Daniel warned. Already, he could see the Covenant attack force making its way toward the depot. There were easily over forty light armored vehicles and troop transports coming.

"That's it, let's go go go!" Wrall yelled as he and his crew quickly piled back into their tank. Its engines roared to life and it pulled out of the depot just as the first wave of Covenant vehicles came into view. Plasma bolts began raining down wildly as the Covenant gunners started firing their weapons at maximum range.

Meanwhile, Alicia had already disembarked from the Cyclops and strapped onto the side of Vesper's Hornet. The small aircraft quickly lifted up into the air and boosted off, safely getting out of the range of the Covenant guns. Wrall's Scorpion, however, did not enjoy the same benefits. The tank was being repeatedly harassed by a squadron of Ghosts and several Spectres. Wrall had expertly rotated his tank around so that its thicker front armor was facing the Covenant attackers. Wrall's driver expertly kept the vehicle moving in reverse while the turret traversed and fired, blowing a Spectre apart. The Scorpion's cannon fired three more times, knocking out another Spectre and three Ghosts.

"We're dry now." Wrall said glumly.

"Piett, Welkin, let's give Captain Wrall some cover fire." Daniel said.

"Roger that." Piett nodded to his mortar teams, who started lobbing shells at the Covenant formation. The armed vehicles of the convoy also started contributing their fire, raining down bullets and cannon shells onto the Covenant. Unlike the humans, the Covenant didn't have the advantage of high ground and they quickly found themselves in a vulnerable position. The remnants of the Covenant attack force broke off and ran to seek shelter in the abandoned supply depot.

"They could have chosen a better hiding spot." Piett mused.

"Not that I'm complaining." Daniel shrugged.

"Captain, would you like to do the honors?" Welkin handed Daniel the detonator for the explosives planted throughout the supply depot.

Several seconds of ominous silence passed by as the timers on the explosives presumably ticked down.

"How long did we set the timer?" Daniel asked.

"We set them for about thirty seconds." Piett glanced at his watch. "They should be detonating by-"

Suddenly, the convoy was awash in golden light as the distant supply depot was consumed in a firestorm. Shortly after, hundreds of secondary explosions rang throughout the air as the unused munitions and explosives in the depot were touched off by the flames.

"See? I told you it would work." Alicia smiled as she appeared behind the trio of officers. Overhead, Vesper's Hornet shrieked as is flew by on overwatch duty.

Meanwhile, Captain Wrall's Scorpion had finally caught up with them. The armored vehicle slowly slid into position alongside the convoy. At first glance, Daniel realized that the tank had seen its share of combat. Energy scoring and pits in the hull plating adorned the vehicle like badges of honor. On its side, Daniel could make the faint, painted letters spelling out _Amanda_, undoubtedly the crew's personal name for their tank. The hatch then popped open and an aged, very tired looking Marine climbed out and saluted Daniel.

"Thanks for the help, Captain." Wrall said. "If it weren't for you guys, me and my crew would have been toast."

"It was the least we could do." Daniel replied.

"I see you've got your own little side operation going on here." Wrall nodded to the convoy. "Where are you headed?"

"North."

"Sounds good to me." Wrall smiled. "Mind if we join in?"

"We could always use a tank." Daniel smiled back. "Welcome to the club."


	8. Open Season

AN: I'm really not going to waste time reintroducing Wrall's crew. If you really want to know about them, go read up on the Mist/All or Nothing/Conflict of Interest trilogy. And yes, I'm still alive, but have drastically less time to dedicate to writing these days.

"_The search continues for Anthony Bellarius' mystery heir, whose only confirmed location is somewhere in the Rama System, where UNSC forces are currently battling the Covenant. The heir's identity, which has not been publically revealed, stands to inherit the entire Bellarius Conglomerate, which is estimated to be worth almost five hundred trillion dollars. Calls have been made to Bellarius' legal representatives, but they have not returned our calls. In other news, with the recent amendment and expansion of the Private Security Treaty, the UNSC has authorized the deployment of ten thousand additional private military contractors to the Rama System to assist UNSC forces currently engaged there…"_

_-UNSC News Network_

Chapter 8: Open Season

**Fort Teller**

Gotts and his small convoy rolled into the only remaining human-held military facility in the southern continent. Once a small UNSC airfield, the facility was leased to J&R as a forward operating base and headquarters. J&R was quick to consolidate its position, shipping in men and equipment to expand and modernize the base. In a few short weeks, anybody who had previously worked at the base would be hard pressed to prove that Fort Teller was the same facility before J&R arrived. The fortified perimeter, mass military force, and relative proximity to the northern defense line all proved to be effective deterrents to any Covenant attack.

However, it wasn't just military contractors populating the base. There were now a number of bounty hunters, mercenaries, hitmen, and professional assassins milling about in the base, clearly unhappy that they were being kept here by the contractors, rather than being out there earning their keep. This was exactly how he wanted it.

"Ladies and Gentlemen." Gotts announced to the gathered mercenaries through a loudspeaker. "I would like to welcome you all to Fort Teller. I do hope you've found our accommodations and hospitality adequate to your needs."

He grinned as he ignored all the various catcalls, curses, and insults thrown his way.

"Now, before I let you loose to do your jobs, I need to lay down a few ground rules." Gotts smirked. "First of all, you will be following MY orders. Anything you do, or you think you want to do, is going to have to be cleared through ME first. Second, in the event you actually do manage to catch your bounty, seventy five percent of the reward will be split with J&R."

If the boos and insults were bad before, they _really_ picked up now. Some of the angry bounty hunters even started throwing random trash at him.

"Well, you're free to go strike out on your own I guess, but then you would no longer enjoy the hospitality of J&R. If you so happen to get a flat tire, run out of supplies, or god forbid, get ambushed by the Covenant, don't expect us to be your personal AAA. Oh, and if you want to actually get off this rock, the only other base with spacecraft is behind the UNSC defense line, so good luck trying to explain what exactly you're doing here. If you don't like any of that, well, you ships are still here and just waiting to take you back to whatever spider hole you came from."

There was silence, apart from the usual frustrated grumbles and grunts.

"Well then, let's get started, shall we?" Gotts smiled. "Over there, you'll be assigned to special J&R units whose job is to support you and make sure you don't get yourselves in trouble. After that, you're free to move along and do your business."

Of course, none of the independent hunters were happy about the arrangement, but unfortunately for them, Gotts held all the cards in this situation. However twenty five percent of the bounty that was being offered was still more than enough to retire on, so it was a loss most of them felt they could swallow.

Gotts meanwhile merely smiled and walked off to scrounge up more men and equipment.

**The Dry Bed**

Like a great herd of steel beasts, the steadily growing convoy of human vehicles began trudging their way across the unforgiving desert. Hundreds of years ago, the Dry Bed was once a mighty river that stretched across the entire continent, and was believed to have been miles wide. However, a combination of time, climate change, and tectonic activity conspired against it. By the time the first human settlers arrived, the Dry Bed was exactly what it said on the tin, nothing but a massive canyon of dry dirt and sand. Daniel and Alicia believed that it would be the safer route, since the only way to tell if there was anything moving in it was from the air. This gave them much more concealment than if they decided to travel on the more exposed highway above.

Taking point was their prize vehicle, Wrall's Scorpion tank _Amanda_. Like the leader of the pack, the tank led the convoy down the snaking canyon route. Behind was a row of over a dozen civilian vehicles, with a number of Warthogs and Viper APCs interspersed among them to provide protection. Never one to take unnecessary risks, Welkin and another Warthog had sped ahead of the convoy to scout for any potential hazards.

"Full stop." Daniel said over the radio to all the vehicles as he checked his watched. "Fifteen minute break."

Suddenly, the air no longer thundered with the roar of dozens of engines, and was instead replaced with an eerie, almost unearthly silence. Very quickly, people started piling out of their vehicles, all too happy to get a few minutes to stretch their legs, relieve themselves, or for those with less fortitude, empty their stomach contents.

"It's all clear for the next few miles." Welkin said after his Warthog returned to the convoy and pulled to a stop. "I also took the opportunity to try and reorient ourselves on the map, and I think I've found something."

"What is it?" Daniel wondered.

"We're near the town of Saar, just about five miles west of here." Welkin brought out his map. "From what I remember, it was a UNSC rally point for their retreat. I picked up some random radio traffic, so I thought there might be stragglers or something hiding out there."

"That makes sense." Daniel nodded. "It couldn't hurt to look."

"And if we don't find anybody there, there's at least a good chance that we can find some leftover equipment." Alicia quipped.

"Really?" Daniel's heart skipped a beat as he hadn't realized Alicia was even there.

"Of course. During a retreat, it's human nature to ditch everything weighing you down." Alicia explained. "Everything that keeps you from running faster is the first to go. That means weapons, ammo, electronics, armor, the works. It also gives them a convenient excuse to not fight."

"Ah, I forgot, you'd have experience in that sort of stuff."

"Just _what_ are you trying to imply?" Alicia glowered.

"Uh," Daniel blinked, suddenly realizing his life was in grave danger. "That wasn't what I meant!"

"Alright, we'll check it out." Alicia said, apparently satisfied with Daniel's apology. "We'll link up with you later if we find anything."

"Uh, last time you said that, we nearly had to leave you two behind." Welkin pointed out, worry creeping onto his voice.

"We could bring Wrall and his tank along." Daniel shrugged. "It would certainly help to give them something to do. I swear, there are times where I think the crew going to snap and just start killing each other."

"I'm sure they're just doing it all in good fun." Welkin grinned.

"Still, it doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence." Alicia frowned.

"Just go along with it. From my experience, the squads that bicker the most among themselves are the most tightly knit." Welkin said sagely.

**Outskirts of Saar**

Bluntly speaking, there didn't really seem to be anything special about Saar at all. In all respects, it was just another nowhere town in the middle of the desert, very much like Perfection. However, what did make this town special was that it was basically a road hub, connecting six different highways together at a single point. This made it an invaluable asset for staging an offensive, as well as the mass evacuations the UNSC arranged. As a result, there were numerous supply, weapon, and vehicle depots littered around the town brimming with goods that the previous UNSC forces here left behind. At least, that was the theory.

"So, any ideas on how to approach?" Daniel asked as the town's silhouette grew in the horizon.

"Well," Alicia squinted as she peered through her binoculars, "there doesn't seem to be any activity, human or Covenant. I'm pretty sure we can just go straight through the front door."

"Whoa! Hold it there!" A loud Scottish voice blared through the radio. "The place is mined!"

"Are you sure?" Daniel asked.

"Scottie knows his mines." Wrall vouched for his driver. "If he says they're there…"

"Damn right they are! You can see some depressions in the dirt where they loosened up the soil from digging, and the road section here is newer than the one we're on. They probably stripped the pavement and repaved it with mines under."

"Would they still be active?"

"Don't know." Alicia frowned. "In most cases, you could disable the mines if you sent a proper IFF code, but there's no way for us to know, or even if the mines are armed or not."

"Isn't there a way to test?"

"Well, you're always free to step on one and find out."

"Jeez, you two bicker almost as much as my crew." Wrall said in a disapproving tone. "Maybe you should devote more time to actually figuring out a way through this minefield."

"I think I've got an idea." Alicia pointed over to the west. "There's a small ridgeline over there that looks like it cuts through the town."

"Huh." Wrall looked through his image enhancer and examined the area Alicia mentioned. "Yeah, looks good. It looks like solid granite, so there's no way they're digging through that."

"Yeah, but…" Alicia examined the ridge. It was extremely uneven and jagged, with random rocks jutting out in all sorts of directions. A Warthog could easily navigate it with some careful maneuvering, but she doubted anything as large and heavy as a Scorpion tank drive though. "can your tank make it?"

"There's nothing Scottie can't drive over." Wrall replied.

"Well, better hold on to your panties." Scottie cracked his knuckles. "This is going to be a rough ride."

"It can't be any worse than your regular driving." Kazi sighed.

"Oh shut up, woman."

"Hey now, let's save the language for when we _really_ need it." Kris laughed. "Like when we're getting shot at by Covvies."

"Whatever." Scottie put _Amanda_ into full throttle. "Here we go!"

In a feat that Daniel and Alicia previously thought was impossible, _Amanda_ thundered forward and began negotiating the uneven and rocky terrain of the ridge. There were times that they though the entire vehicle would gut itself on the sharp rocks, or even worse, completely flip over onto its back. However, Scottie managed to keep the tank on its treads and twisted and turned the vehicle to keep it moving through the rocks. After a few minutes of tense, controlled maneuvering, _Amanda _finally cleared the rocks and broke into the town.

"Well, now the only problem is getting back out." Scottie mused.

"Okay, I will officially never question your driving abilities again." Alicia announced. "I've never seen a Scorpion do that."

"Damn right, because I'm one of a kind, motherfucker!" Scottie yelled jubilantly.

Daniel and Alicia followed suit with their Warthog, which took significantly less time due to their smaller size and better off road capability. Within a few short minutes, they joined _Amanda_ within the confines of Saar. Unlike Perfection and Springtown, Saar had an odd, empty feel to it. Perhaps it was the gloomy atmosphere, or the complete absence of any life, including Covenant. Saar was truly a ghost town.

"Well, this is certainly a depressing locale." Wrall remarked dryly.

"Which is why we're not staying." Daniel shook his head. "Let's split up. You take this side of town. I'll go check out the far side."

"Sounds good to me. If you're in trouble, just give a holler."

"Probably won't have to. Just follow the explosions." Daniel joked weakly.

**J&R Recon Team 8  
Twenty Miles from Saar**

"Sir, we've been receiving some scattered radio traffic from Saar." Lieutenant Mudd reported. "What are your orders?"

"Is it UNSC?" Gotts' distorted voice asked back through the radio.

"Yes sir. It sounds like they're scouting the town."

"Check it out. If it's them, then you know what to do. Bring along the auxiliaries just in case."

Mudd scowled and turned his head back. By "auxiliaries", Gotts was referring to the civilian riffraff that had decided to tag along. Though priding themselves to be professional killers, there were nothing more than a rabble of thugs and hired guns. They lacked the discipline and professionalism of _real_ soldiers. However, even auxiliaries had their uses, and Mudd intended to take full advantage of that fact.

**Saar**

"Damn, they were sure very thorough with their evac." Daniel sighed as they came across yet another empty supply dump. Evidently, the retreating Marines had taken everything they could with them, and destroyed whatever they had to leave behind. It was soon getting to the point that Daniel thought that coming here was a waste of time.

"Whoa, stop!" Alicia yelled.

"What?" Daniel slammed on the brakes, bewildered.

"I think we've got something." Alicia hopped off the Warthog and approached a warehouse. "It looks intact. The demolition charges they placed must not have gone off."

"Wait… doesn't that mean they're still there then?" Daniel asked nervously.

"Oh, don't be such a baby." Alicia sighed. "If they didn't go off a month ago, they certainly won't now. The C7 is probably inert, or it's a faulty detonator. Either way, it's good for us. Now help me out here."

Daniel disembarked and helped pull the doors upon, which was much harder than it sounded since the unused door mechanisms had ample time to clog themselves with dust and dirt. However, the doors finally conceded defeat and creaked open, revealing the contents within. What they found was a veritable goldmine of salvageable loot. While the supply depot provided them with ample ammunition and small arms, this particular warehouse happened to be storing heavy weaponry. M247 heavy machine guns, M19 rocket launchers, and even SRS99 sniper rifles, along with ample ammunition for each kind of weapon. In the back, there were crates of unused carapace armor.

"Jackpot." Alicia grinned with a devious glint in her eye. She picked up one of the sniper rifles and began inspecting it carefully.

Meanwhile, Daniel wandered further into the warehouse. However, as he continued, he began to find items that were less and less useful. There were flashlights, cans of face paint, and bizarrely enough, a crate full winter gear. Then he rounded a corner and then saw something he clearly wasn't expecting.

"Holy _shit_."

"What?" Alicia bolted by his side, her rifle ready, when she slid to a stop and gaped alongside him. "Oh wow."

There, sitting as if it were waiting for exactly this moment to be found, was a SP42 Cobra. It was an armored vehicle that looked similar to a Warthog, except slightly larger and sporting a pair of heavy gauss cannons that would make a Scorpion cannon look like beebee gun.

"Shotgun." Both Marines said simultaneously.

Meanwhile, on the other end of Saar, Wrall and his crew had no such luck. They found nothing worth taking from the empty and destroyed supply dumps.

"Ah, typical. We pretty much wasted several hours for nothing." Scottie sighed.

"At least you actually get to do something." Kazi yawned. "I pretty much fell asleep."

"What?" Scottie turned his head. "Why you-"

"Hey, knock it off!" Wrall was clearly far too tired to be dealing with their bickering right now.

"Huh, what'd I miss?" Kris rubbed his eyes as he woke up.

"Jeez, you too?" Scottie shook his head.

"Shut it, everyone!" Wrall hushed his crew as he glanced at his sensor screen. "The sensor is picking up contacts just several kilometers out.

"Covenant?" Kris asked.

"No, the signatures just don't quite match up." Wrall narrowed his eyes as he examined the sensor readings. "They look human, and they're broadcasting on human codes and chatter."

"Survivors?"

"Maybe." Wrall frowned. "But there's something off about this."

"What's the problem?" Daniel asked.

"Ah!" Wrall forgot that he was still broadcasting. "We've got contacts. Radio traffic shows that it may be a civilian convoy, but the sensor readings don't quite match up. It looks more like a military formation…"

"What direction?" Daniel asked, suddenly tense.

"They're coming in on your side of town."

"Wrall, can you get to work clearing out some of those mines?" Daniel said. "I hope we won't need it, but it'll help to have a quick escape route out of town."

"There something I should know, Captain?" Wrall asked suspiciously.

"Nothing really, just being cautious."

"Great, now we've been demoted to mineclearers." Scottie shook his head. "What are we going to do? We don't have the equipment to handle that."

"We don't, but the town might." Wrall popped open the observation hatch and grinned when he saw a small construction yard nearby. "All you have to do is know where to look."

**Outskirts of Saar**

As Mudd's column rolled into town, the mercenary commander ordered a full stop. He remembered from the briefing that Saar was surrounded by a network of anti personnel and anti tank mines. Fortunately, the UNSC was kind enough to provide J&R with the necessary arming and deactivation codes. However, Mudd was not one to take unnecessary risks. There really was no reliable way to tell if a mine was disarmed except by actually stepping on it.

"Perhaps we should give the auxiliaries the honor of entering the town first." Mudd said diplomatically. "I'm sure they would be overjoyed to finally be able to have their leash loosened."

With that, a number of Warthogs barreled over the minefields. Mudd then breathed a sigh of relief in the absence of explosions and destruction. At least the IFF codes were still working properly.

"Sir, we got a visual." One of Mudd's scouts transmitted a picture. It was still blurry, but Mudd could make out the blurry silhouette of a Marine crouched atop a shallow ridge. He waited for a few seconds for the image to zoom in and the facial recognition to confirm whether it was their target or not.

"Facial recognition complete." The software said in a monotone voice. "Accuracy of 96 percent with a margin of error of two percent."

"That's her." Mudd nodded. "All units, you are clear to engage."

From the looks of it, the auxiliaries seemed as if they were going reach her first. No matter, at least they could test her and her companion's mettle.

**Saar**

Alicia sighed as she heard the undisciplined whoops and cheers over the radio from the oncoming Warthogs. There was no way any solider, UNSC or mercenary, that would deliberately give themselves away by broadcasting over an open channel. Great, she was essentially being assaulted by frat boys with guns.

They began firing wildly, which pretty much confirmed the fact that they weren't friendly. She then fell back, hoping that they would fall for the trap. As she sprinted back to her fallback position, Alicia noted that the narrow street she was moving down was forcing the Warthogs to travel in single file, a perfect situation.

"Now!" Alicia yelled, throwing herself to the ground.

There was a loud, thunderous boom as a hypersonic 150mm kinetic rod punched through several buildings and went straight through the column of Warthogs, annihilating all five Warthogs.

"Damn." Daniel whistled as he sat in the gunner's seat of the Cobra. Even though he wasn't trained to operate the Cobra, the UNSC was forward thinking enough to make their equipment as user friendly as possible, so it was fairly easy to intuit what the controls were.

**Outskirts of Saar**

Mudd blanched as he saw five Warthogs instantly disappear from the sensor screen.

"What the hell happened?!" He yelled at his driver.

"I have no idea! I can't pull off anything coherent from their comms!"

"Damnit!" Mudd seethed. It seemed like before, their quarry had some crafty tricks up her sleeve. "Send the rest of the unit forward. Have them flank the position the auxiliaries were at."

**Saar**

"Time to go." Alicia said, waving Daniel out of the gunner's seat. "They're not going to fall for it a second time."

"Right." Daniel nodded, flipping a switch before exiting the vehicle. The Cobra then automatically and smoothly "packed" itself from its artillery mode into its mobile mode, converting its destructive 150mm rail cannon into a pair of smaller but no less deadly gauss cannons. Alicia then hooked up a trailer filled with their salvaged loot.

Once they were ready, Daniel, who had been relegated to driving again, gunned the engine. Though not nearly as powerful or fast as a Warthog, and being weighed down with extra cargo, the Cobra made a decent effort at getting distance between itself and its enemies.

"We got company!" Daniel yelled as a pair of Warthogs arrived to cut them off. Alicia fired off a short burst of gauss fire and quickly reduced both vehicles to slag.

"We just lost two more units." Mudd's driver pointed out.

"Damnit." Mudd seethed. There was no intel to suggest that the target had anything as powerful as a Cobra! Fortunately, he still had the numbers advantage. All he had to do was surround them. However, not one to make assumptions, Mudd keyed his radio again. "Reactivate the mines. They're not getting out."

"Uh, Wrall, I hope you've got a way out of here." Daniel yelled over the whine of the Cobra's dual gauss cannons. "We're knee deep in hostiles!"

"Just home in on our position. We'll cover you!" Wrall responded.

Daniel flinched as bullets began ricocheting off of the rear of the Cobra and the trailer it was towing. "They're behind us!"

"And in front." Alicia scowled.

Sure enough, they were surrounded by no less than six Warthogs, each painted black and bearing the J&R logo. There was no way the weighed down Cobra could outrun them, and even with its superior firepower, there were simply too many to fight off.

"We're in deep trouble." Alicia scowled.

"Which is why you've got the Armored Cav covering your back!" Wrall yelled happily through the radio.

Mudd gaped when he saw the Scorpion tank pull into the street, plowing straight through his carefully crafted formation. Now there _definitely_ wasn't any intel on this. He had no weapons or equipment that could even hope to put a dent in that titanium monster.

"Fall back, FALL BACK!" Mudd screamed in panic. None of his subordinates needed to second guess him. Within seconds, Mudd and the remnants of his scouting force were barreling out of the town. However, Mudd was not about to leave it at that. "Rearm the minefield, and get me a line to Fort Teller! That should keep them penned in there long enough to get some reinforcements, and tell them to get some anti-tank weapons!"

Meanwhile, back inside the abandoned town, the Marines watched on as the PMC troops swiftly retreated into the desert.

"Who the hell were those guys?" Wrall asked, squinting at the now distant silhouettes of the J&R troops.

"Just looters and rogue PMCs." Daniel quickly explained, leaving out the part where they were actively hunting him and Alicia down. "We've run into them before, and they seem pretty determined to make sure we don't get back to UNSC territory."

"Well that makes sense." Wrall shook his head. "Something like this could ruin them if it was ever made public."

"Either way," Alicia butted in, "we should probably worry about getting out of here."

"Oh right, we've got the mine problem covered." Wrall said. "We found a dozer blade that can dig up those Lotus mines, since they can't have been buried that deep."

"How long?" Daniel asked, wary of the J&R picket line just on the horizon. I doubt they're just going to sit around up there forever."

"It'll probably take about half an hour, tops." Scottie said. "Assuming we don't run into any screwups."

"Why the hell are you looking at me?" Kazi glowered.

**Outskirts of Saar**

Mudd frowned as he looked down on the town through his binoculars. He could see the targets moving around in the town, obviously trying to find a way to cut through the minefield. This was bad for him, because that meant they would escape the town before his reinforcements could arrive. However, even though he lacked any anti-tank weaponry, he did have access to one other asset that could prove useful.

"Get Colonel Strenkov on the line." Mudd said. "Tell him to fire up the cannons and shell that town, on their position."

**Saar**

Meanwhile, the Marines were hastily hitching a discarded dozer blade they had scavenged from the abandoned construction yard onto _Amanda_. Though there were more than enough similarities between a battle tank and a large bulldozer, the Scorpion chassis was never designed to accommodate the blade, so the crew had to hastily weld it directly to the hull.

"Damnit." Kazi muttered as her welding torch sputtered out. "Hey, any of you mind looking for a spare fuel tank?"

"I'll go." Daniel said, sprinting toward a nearby warehouse. He activated his flashlight and began carefully navigating the darkened interior. As he swung the beam of light around, he caught something in the corner of his eye. There, spattered on the wall in bright orange construction paint was a crudely written message.

NOVEMBER OSCAR ROMEO CHARLIE OSCAR LIMA

It took Daniel a few seconds to realize that it was the phonetic alphabet. It was the most basic of codes that all members of the armed forces were taught. He quickly memorized the message and dashed back out of the warehouse.

"Well, it's about time." Wrall scoffed over the roaring engine of his tank. "We're all finished here and was about to send someone after you."

"And you didn't even bring back what you were supposed to." Kazi shook her head.

"Captain, does the world 'NORCOL' mean anything to you?" Daniel asked.

"No." Wrall said, confused. He glanced at Alicia and his crew, who were just as clueless at the meaning. "Where'd that come from?"

"Some Marines left a message behind. They left behind the phonetic for NORCOL."

"Maybe Welkin would know." Alicia shrugged. "He seems to know this whole area pretty well."

"Well, we've got to get out of here first." Wrall clambered into his vehicle. "Just stay close behind us. It's going to be a wild ride!"

And not a moment too soon, since artillery began raining down on the town. Fortunately, the shells weren't properly ranged and were fairly inaccurate. However, it wouldn't be long before the spotter started sending targeting corrections to the guns.

"Let's go!" Daniel yelled.

_Amanda_ roared as its engines powered forward through the minefield. Thankfully for them, the mines were hastily planted, and therefore were not buried very deep. The dozer blade was enough to shove the mines out of the way, while the few that did explode had their force dulled by the blade. Daniela and Alicia followed close behind in the Cobra while the artillery shells began to get uncomfortably closer and closer.

"Faster faster faster!" Wrall urged.

"I get the point!" Scottie yelled. _Amanda_ powered through the minefield, and with one last surge of speed, cleared the danger zone. Free to maneuver, both vehicles quickly made their escape of the area.

Meanwhile, a frustrated Mudd could only radio his superiors and give them the bad news. Maybe they would have better luck at catching that infernal bounty.


End file.
